
Copyright N? 



Ci)iVRIGHT DEPOSm 



WILDFOWLING TALES 







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.•^jf^ 




WATERFOWL AT AVERY ISLAND, LOUISIANA 

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIND PERMISSION OF 
EDGAR A. MclLHENNY 



WILDFOWLING TALES 

FROM THE GREAT DUCKING RESORTS 
OF THE CONTINENT 




n-"^ 



— BY- 



HA]\ni/rON M. IjAING 
CLARK McAJDAMS 
EDWARD C. WARNER 
JOHN B. THOMPSON 



PAUIi E. PAGE 
ROBERT E, ROSS 
FOREST H. CONOVER 
HARRISON MINGE 



AVILLJAM C. HAZEIiTON 

Drawings by 
JOSEPH W. DAY 

Compiled and Published by 

WILLIAM C. HAZELTON 

CHICAGO 
1921 



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,11% 



\\a- 



COPYRIGHT BY W. C. HAZELTON, 1 92 1. 



Mi -7 1321 



PRESS OF EASTMAN BROS., 542 SOUTH DEARBORN 
STREET, CHICAGO, ILL. 

3)CU614365 



DEDICATION 



TRUE it is of many great men, that some of the 
most accomplished and gifted are the plainest 
and most unassuming, and this holds good in 
every instance of the following gentlemen to whom this 
book is respectfully dedicated. One thing is certain, did 
we but have an opportunity to become better acquainted, 
many lasting friendships would be formed. 

REPRESENTATIVE SPORTSMEN OF AMERICA: 
DANIEL W. VOORHEES, 

PEORIA, IIjJj. 

In every gathering of sportsmen Mr. Voorhees' rare 
personal qualities are appreciated. He was but recently 
president of the Illinois State Sportsmen's Association 
and has had many other honors accorded him. Mr. 
Voorhees is president and with his son, who is secretary's- 
treasurer, are the guiding spirits of The Duck Island 
Preserve. 

JOSEPH PULITZER, JR. 

ST. LOUIS, MO. 

Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., is an enthusiastic duck hunter. 
He is a mem.ber of The Delta Duck Club at ihe delta of 
the Mississippi River and also spends some time each 
season on his palatial yacht, the Granada II, on the 
Texas Gulf Coast. As a man and sportsman Joseph 
Pulitzer, Jr., is a great credit to us and our fraternity. 



11 DEDICATION 

EDWARD A. McILHENNY, 

AVERY ISIiAND, LA. 

No one in America has aided the cause of conserva- 
tion more greatly than Mr. Mcllhenny. Starting with 
his own gift of his share in the Ward-Mcllhenny tract 
of 60,000 acres, he is directly responsible for the State 
of Louisiana now having a refuge of 220,000 acres for 
the protection of wild life. 

DR. THOMAS H. LEWIS, 

CHICAGO, IIjL. 

When you meet Dr. Lewis for the first time, you feel 
sorry for yourself that the fates had not been more 
generous to you at an earlier date. Besides being a fine 
shot at game. Dr. Lewis is an expert and devoted trap- 
shot. From his multifarious duties he escapes whenever 
possible to participate in this sport, as well as in hunting. 

JOHN DYMOND, JR. 

NEW ORIiEANS, L/A. 

Mr. Dymond organized The Delta Duck Club, probably 
the greatest ducking club in America. As an attorney, 
he is ever ready to give his valuable services for the 
cause of conservation and recently drew up papers, in- 
vestigated titles, etc., which transferred the gifts of Mrs. 
Russell Sage and the Rockefeller Foundation of vast 
tracts to the State of Louisiana for permanent refuges 
for wild life. 



DEDICATION 111 

WILLEY S. McCREA, 

CHICAGO, lULi. 

Everything concerning our game and wild life, par- 
ticularly our game birds and waterfowl, greatly interests 
Mr. McCrea. Jack Miner's work has especially inter- 
ested him. In Chicago Mr. McCrea is a member of the 
University, Chicago Athletic and South Shore Country 
clubs and has a shooting lodge on the Illinois River. To 
know him is to forever be a friend and admirer of Willey 
S. McCrea. 

DANIEL W. VOORHEES, JR., 

PEORIA, ILIi. 

Dannie Voorhees, Jr., as he is kno^vn to his intimates, 
is a ''chip of the old block." He has ever been an 
enthusiastic hunter and a true sportsman, and is one of 
the best trap-shots in the United States, as his records 
in many contests prove. He is a crack shot on the 
marsh and in the field also. 

LEE STURGES, 

CHICAGO, ILiL. 

Truly many of the finest personal qualities enter into 
the composition of Lee Sturges. As well as being a 
zealous hunter, he annually enjoys outings in the wilds 
of New Brunswick and other parts of the far northern 
wilderness. One could not wish a more desirable com- 
panion for an outing than Lee Sturges. 



CONTENTS 



A Manitoba Duck Hunt — Indian Style. 

Hamilton M. Laing i 

At the Duck Island Preserve. 

William C. Hazelton i8 

That Pond in the Hills. 

John B. Thompson 25 

An Alberta Day. 

Paul E. Page 32 

Millions of Ducks. 

Clark McAdams 43 

Opening Day in North Dakota. 

Edtvard C. Warner 57 

Duck Shooting in Southern California. 

Robert E. Ross 61 

Ducking at Moon Lake, Louisiana. 

Harrison Minge 72 

Lake Koshkonong — Historical and Sporting. 

William C. Hazelton 78 

Random Notes On Duck Shooting. 

Paul E. Page 88 

The Quest of the Mallard. 

Edward C. Warner 94 

Shooting Snow Geese in Nebraska. 

Paul E. Page loi 

Duck Shooting in Ontario. 

Forest H. Conover 108 

Timber Shooting On the Illinois River. 

William C. Hazelton 113 

Recreation and Our Brotherhood. 

William C. Hazelton 120 



INTRODUCTION 



ENTHUSIASM for my favorite sport and a desire 
to please others led me to prepare this book for 
you. Not wishing to undertake writing an entire 
book alone, I enlisted the aid of some experienced 
sportsmen who are able to write entertainingly. 

It is very probable that one of the lures of wildfowl- 
ing is the study of the birds in their native environment. 
Their conduct w^hen undisturbed is extremely interest- 
ing to one who loves them for themselves alone. I have 
touched upon this in one portion of this book. Yet one 
also enjoys pleasure of a different kind in testing his 
skill at the fast-flying waterfowl, and hence the gun. 

As this is the fourth book I have published on this 
subject, I feel that I have added somewhat to our per- 
manent literature on the sport. The pleasing narratives 
comprising this volume endeavor to record and per- 
petuate the annals of wildfowling. 

You will find herein some extremely interesting liis- 
torical facts as well as a trace of humor in some of the 
stories. 

Should the book please you, my labor in preparing it 
will not have been in vain. 

William C. Hazelton. 

Chicago, May, 1921. 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT— INDIAN STYLE 



HAMILTON M. LAING 



OCTOBER is the month that brings to the Mani- 
toba prairies that period of the year that may be 
designated briefly as shooters ' heaven. For Octo- 
ber ushers in those first sharp night frosts and tingling 
sparkling mornings when in the bright sunshine the 
sharp-tailed grouse cackle from the poplar tips; calls 
the trumpeting gray goose and yelling white wavy out 
of the north to go stringing back and forth from lake to 
field over the faded yellow plain; draws greenhead's 
northerly legions on whiffling wings to the plainland 
lakes and marshes and to the fat living of the grain fields ; 
and in short, brings a full month of paradise for the 
man who has blood in him that responds to such stimulii ; 
the lover of a g*un and an opportunity to use it out under 
the autumn sky. 

Greenhead's legions were stubble-feeding with a ven- 
geance. They had been at it for over a month;" and for 
the man who has interviewed mallards on the fields, I 
need say never another word on the subject. For the 
brother who has not, it may be said that in certain sec- 
tions this best-loved of ducks goes afield to glean his 
living on the stubble. He makes two meals a day, just as 



2 WILDFOWLING TALES 

the geese do. There is no seasonal regularity about him. 
He may stubble-feed early in the season, or late or not 
at all, or even all season (September and October) ; in 
this matter he is a law unto himself. But when his le- 
gions have once formed the habit, he is worth cultivation ; 
for though we may have ditfering opinions as to what 
constitutes the acme of sport afield, it is a certainty that 
in the realm of American small game hunting, stubble- 
shooting in a goodly flight of greenheads constitutes the 
upper crust, the very cream of the sport. 

Saturday was to be the day, but the fates were against 
me ; for on Friday, Frat dropped off the train ; the other 
three of our quartette who were wont to make Green- 
head unhappy over his breakfast also came into town 
(Oak Lake) in the old democrat, and when the four of 
them pulled out after the yearly reunion, it was in the 
direction that spelled disaster for the field-feeding mal- 
lards. But it spelled disaster otherwise; for brotherly 
love is supposed to know no bounds, and now I was gun- 
less; Frat had the custody of my game-getter — a su- 
preme concession this, I maintain, for a shooter. 

Borrows a Gun. 

Under such circumstances one must either rent a gun 
or borrow one. Good guns seldom may be rented; and 
anj^vay such guns have a pernicious tendencj^ toward get- 
ting themselves scratched or disfigured and raising awk- 
ward complications at settling time. Yet one hesitates 
to borrow. Plainly, however, it was up to my friend S — . 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT 3 

He had a gun and didn't shoot. A few months previously 
S — had shown me his weapon ; a double-barreled fowling 
piece of English make, also of ancient lineage plamly, 
yet so perfectly preserved — apparently — as to suggest 
that it had just come from the maker. I hesitated to 
borrow such^a gun. Not only was it an expensive arm 
made by a celebrated London firm — it had cost fifty 
pounds sterling, was beautifully finished and engraved 
from butt-plate to sight ; a very aristocrat of a gun — but 
it was a veritable heirloom ; it had been brought to Can- 
ada by S — 's father in pioneer days. Yet he had offered 
me the use of it, and now I decided to borrow. 

So it was settled; I would make an expedition afoot, 
travel light, Indian fashion; and at 4 a. m. on Saturday 
morning old Orion and some of his apparently misplaced 
brother constellations found me footing it south toward 
the marshes. The only ducking apparatus I carried was 
my newly acquired gun and two boxes of shells. Besides 
the ammunition, the capacious pockets of my shooting- 
coat held a mighty lunch; my destination lay four miles 
from to"WTi, and past experience warned me that usually 
it was a greater distance on the return. I wore knee 
trousers and spiked walking shoes. Altogether it was 
to be a travel-light expedition — Indian hunting. 

Fortune seemed still against me. A lovely moonlight 
lay upon the plains, to continue till daylight, and I knew 
well that Greenhead's procession to the fields would 
commence and end before the da^vii and precluding all 
possibility of our meeting — legally. For this is a trick 



4 WILDFOWLING TALES 

of his ; when the moon is strong in the morning he aims 
to be settled on the stubble long before sunrise. I knew 
also that the main army of these whifile-winged tribes 
were feeding to northward and out of reach of walking 
shoes and that I must content myself with the chance of 
meeting some small flights moving about between the 
marshes or feeding to eastward. 

Making An Early Start. 

The morning was almost dead calm; a slight frost 
glistened on the withered grass in the hollows; the air 
was so keen, so full of life-stirring properties that a 
four-mile hike almost would have been sufficient reward 
in itself for this 3 a. m. rising. The hay-flats fell behind ; 
a coyote sang his dawning songs off in the distance; a 
horned owl boomed in the poplar woods near at hand. 
Then soon I left the main trail, cut through a narrow 
ridge of sand hills where a northern hare or two startled 
went off stamping heavily at their old trick ; then I came 
out upon the hay-flat and skirted the lonely marshes — a 
marsh and slough chain that stretched away to south- 
ward for miles and connected with Oak Lake in the 
westerly distance. 

A hay-stack at intervals stood visible in the moonlight 
and at one of these I sat do^vn to await the daybreak and 
enjoy the strange loneliness of the marshes. For it is 
simply grand to get into these lands of reed and rush 
when one can feel that he is alone with them and their 
denizens. A slight air at times presaging the da^vn rus- 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT 5 

tied the dead white-top grass and set the nearby rushes 
whispering harshly; and sometimes it played around 
the stack and faint Aeolian airs came from a protruding 
hay-tuft. The moonlight air was full of silence; yet a 
silence with an undertone. From everywhere across 
the water behind the dark rushy fringes rose a gentle 
chatter and intermittent gabble of duck talk. Now and 
again a mallard duck with the insistence of her loqua- 
cious sex lifted her voice in a noisy "Quack! Quack! 
Quack ! Quack ! ' ' beginning vociferous and crescendo and 
then dying out almost to a whisper. The marsh folk 
never seem to sleep and they were especially noisy now 
that the dawn was near. At intervals a patter of webbed 
feet sputtered noisily on the water. 

Then I heard it ''Whif -whiff- whife-whiff -iff -iff." A 
hundred yards ahead at the edge of the bay in the lesser 
slough, a big wing was taking its wake-up stretch and 
exercise. It was a goose wing, I knew; no other could 
sing that tune. Just below the point of the little scrub- 
crowned knoll — I had spotted that "Whiff -iff" exactly — 
a flock of geese v/ere roosting on the mud margin. The 
water was low, and they had come ashore in the night — 
a goose loves to roost so — and now they were awaking 
and preparing to depart as soon as the moonlight turned 
to dawn. Such at least was the story I built from the 
slender evidence of that "Whiff-iff-iff. " Then I started 
out to verify it. 

Of course these birds were protected at this hour by 
the law; but like a small boy playing with a bonfire, I 



6 WILDFOWLING TALES 

simply had to go as close as I dared. I would do an In- 
dian act in the grass, I told myself, sneak up close and 
wait for daylight. So I started. In front of me was a 
little dip with a bare spot where the trail cut through ; in 
spring it was a channel between the sloughs ; even yet a 
tongue of water reached up from both sides and this 
channel was a flight way — my objective and intended sta- 
tion at sunrise. 

Birds Take Alarm. 

I bent double and slipped across the hollow, reached 
the far side and then crouched down into the shorter 
grass and then gingerly snaked off in the direction of 
that seductive wing. At that moment from the edge of 
the hollow, quite at the water's edge, a mallard drake 
with a noisy flutter sprang into the still air and let go 
with a mighty ' ' Quack ! ' ' — a warning full of deadly con- 
viction; an accusation that seemed to rasp out a signal 
to every ear within a mile. Another and another duck 
followed, each yelling "Thief!"; two or three more 
sprang up at the other side of the gutway, each trying 
to outnoise the other. The game was up. 

''Hw-ruk!" said a goose on the mud flat — that low 
call of a wary old sentinel wawa that in literal transla- 
tion means, "Boys, let's get out of here!" Then pande- 
monium seemed to break out in marshdom. There was a 
great flapping of wings and a blast of goose trumpets, 
and dimly I saw twenty or thirty Canadas rise from the 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT 7 

mud, skim the water and lift against the reddening east 
and disappear in the dawn sky. 

It was the signal. The whole slough world seemed to 
bring its head from under its wing. From far and 
near rose a pattering of webbed feet on the water, here 
and there and everywhere, and every few moments whif- 
fling wings passed overhead. It was possible to listen 
and ''spot" the various centers of population on the 
slough chain; so resonant was the air that rattle of the 
water under the impact of kicking feet seemed audible 
at half a mile or more. 

It was possible also to distinguish other things too. 
The mallards rose with sudden abruptness; the pro- 
longed pattering rushes came from other feet; canvas- 
back flocks rising in their clumsy way to bear off to the 
distant lake after their night feeding among the pond 
weed. Each whiffling draught that passed overhead 
stirred me as only such things can. Now and again a 
whiffling string of greenheads burst into view for an in- 
stant, visible in the light that was half moon and half 
dawn, to disappear as quickly toward the north. The 
pattering rumpus lasted but a few minutes, yet as I knew 
that during that time hundreds and hundreds of green- 
heads had left the water and were trailing off in sinuous 
strings through the moonlight darkness to come down 
on far off wheat lands to northward. 



WILDFOWLING TALES 

Waiting For Daylight. 

So I chose a strategic spot along the gutway and waited 
for sunup. The east became red and yellow, and by and 
by the moonlight gave place to dawnlight. A simmering 
row of geese arose far off on the distant lake ; a few be- 
lated crows left the sand hills and crossed the yellow 
sky; a covey of sharp-tailed grouse on a nearby knoll 
cackled and boomed and set up a bit of a dance ; the sun 
peeped over the eastern rim and kindled a patch of frost 
diamonds on the knolls and the grass-tips. But there 
was no flight ; scarcely a dozen ducks had been in the air 
since daylight. Then three flocks of speckled geese (white 
fronted) came out from the lake and after going bitter- 
ingly settled upon a field about a mile to eastward. As 

1 watched this interesting goose manceuver, I noticed a 
dense little dotted cloud swirl over the same spot and 
settle — mallards. Here was matter for future reference. 

Then I had an opportunity to try the Aristocrat. A 
goldeneye came whizzing up the channel — I took it for a 
bluebill at first — and as it spun by me I let go once, twice 
— futilely. Whereupon when I came to myself I was im- 
pressed with the undoubted fact that my blue-blooded 
old family relic had a fierce rearward action, also that 
my first shot had landed about six feet above my 
bird and the second perhaps two feet nearer. That 
gun was straight — straighter even than I had imagined 
after aiming it a hundred times along the road in the 
morning as I had tried vainly to get the hang of it. It 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT 9 

was light, too, quite in the six pound class, thin as paper 
almost, at the muzzle, evidently not built for nitro loads — 
and oh ! the recoil ! It kicked like a cow. 

A lone mallard drake came up the channel, calmly 
looking for trouble. I was well concealed, and he did 
not see me until I pushed up the Aristocrat. He took 
two wild flings out of himself as I bombarded his vicinity 
and then went on toward the big slough. I recovered as 
well as I could, and then tried to stop a second whizzing 
golden-eye, but he went on to keep his engagement lake- 
ward. My rumpus scared up a few birds in the smaller 
slough and a dozen mallards swung up the flightv^^ay, 
trying as they came to locate the danger spot. I did my 
best to haul that sky-piloting muzzle out of the zenith 
and hold under my bird, but the only tangible effect of 
my broadside was that I had more than half a conviction 
that I hit a duck ten feet behind the drake I had in my 
right eye. I moved and took station on the edge of the 
slough, a gun-shot from the water, and when a pintail 
circled very low, I let go again. Though momentarily 
dizzy, I was willing to swear that I spattered the slough 
pretty generally all over. 

Inspecting the Aristocrat. 

Then I opened the shooting iron and looked at the in- 
side. I understood. The Aristocrat was all outside. 
The inside of those barrels was hopeless — and later I 
learned that they had been shortened and the choke bored 
out by the original owner. 



10 WILDFOWLING TALES 

However, I stood by my guns, as the saying is; that 
is, I stood behind the Aristocrat. The ducks came back 
from the fields at 9, and a few moved about between 
sloughs and I slammed away. Barring the fact that my 
right jaw was feeling like an acute attack of the mumps, 
also that my head ached, my shoulder was sore and the 
knuckles on my right hand more or less severely skinned, 
I really was having a good time. I was keeping up ap- 
pearances anyway. Someone off in the distance probably 
imagined I was killing birds. I had gotten to a point 
beyond exasperation; I w^as a joke now to myself. 

At about 10:30 the first flock of speckled-breasts 
on the field arose, and with a great teeheeing and bitter- 
ing came winging ; but though they were low, they passed 
on the far side of the nearby knoll. So I changed over ; 
and I was just in time., for scarcely had I settled into a 
new blind when the remainder of those noisy jokesters 
came after the others. I watched that oncoming line — 
it was low — and w^ished that by some magic I could turn 
this old double-hammered relic into a real gun. What 
music! What a thrilling, nerve-shattering medley of 
blood-stirring sound is the chorus of fifty of these noisy 
gabblers as they wing with maws full of wheat off to the 
water. They passed at thirty yards, the black breast- 
spots of the old birds showing up sharply against the 
soft coats, and at the psychologically correct instant I 
sprang up and did my dead best, after which I stretched 
out on the grass in the wanning sun to think it over. 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT II 

I was ready at about 2 p. m. I found that field — not 
without difficulty, however, for I had to search over al- 
most a quarter of a section before I discovered the tell- 
tale down-tufts and droppings — and then I had to build 
my blind. I was hunting Indian fashion. I had no de- 
coys ; had merely to hide and out-guess the birds. Hid- 
ing is not easy on a short-stubbled field without a spade 
to dig a pit ; but I had been there before. Very close to 
my desired point — there is a point on almost every field 
where circling geese will cross — if you can outguess 
them — I found a small triangle of mangled, half -cut grain 
left by the binders. There I dug my six-foot trench. 
The soil was rather sandy, and though walking shoes are 
not the best excavators, mine served. When I was 
through kicking heel and toe I had a furrow about a foot 
in depth. 

Building a Blind. 

Then I stubbled the edges. That blind was to be a 
work of art — and making real blinds, not hides, is an art. 
When it was finished it was scarcely visible at a few 
yards — just the ri^ht amount of stubble planted ; not too 
much or too little ; the longest scattering tufts leaning in- 
ward to camouflage the fresh earth and deceitful occu- 
pant of the furrow. There was an inner fringe of stubble 
too on the right-hand side to conceal the shine and glint 
of the old Aristocrat. I hid shooting coat and extras at 
the side of the field, packed my shooting cap into the 
right shoulder of my sweater and then lay down. 



12 WILDFOWLING TALES 

*'Tee-hee-liee-liee!" They were coming. About 3:30 
the bittering cry drifted from westward and I could 
see a line in the sky off toward the lowering sun. Now 
if my birds are going to pass toward my head while 
I am ambushed in a trench, I lie on my stomach ; if they 
are to pass toward my feet, the other side works more 
advantageously; shooting position comes more quickly 
so. Having no decoys to draw my birds I could only 
guess ; so I turned over on my back. 

The Laughing Goose. 

The laughing goose is no fool. They came to the field 
high. Because I was so near the level of the ground I 
could turn my head and see every move they made. When 
they reached the edge of the field they did a thing most 
unusual — surveyed the field a moment on arching wings, 
then as though assured of a clean coast, did the tumble 
act — tumbled down helter-skelter almost to the stubble, 
then reformed line and headed — at me! They veered 
neither to right nor left but skimmed slowly over the 
stubble as though eyeing it for especially good picking. 

Now they arched their wings a beat or two and my 
heart sank; but no, they fanned up again and came on; 
they had quit their noisy gabble and were merely jab- 
bering contentedly. Up, up — Gods ! Did they intend to 
alight beside mef Up, up — I was looking them in the 
face. But with a fierce effort I held my back to the bot- 
tom of the trench — and then sat up among them. I had 
almost to make elbow room for myself and the Aristo- 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT 13 

crat. That moment was worth a lot of endeavor afield. 
But a speckle-bellied goose is a nimble bird in the air, 
and I lost no time. The heirloom came into position on 
the stern end of a wriggling goose, boomed, shifted to 
another and boomed ; and when my vision cleared a trifle 
I went out and picked up two dead geese. Both had fallen 
within twenty-five yards; the Aristocrat plainly was 
deadly at that range. First blood. 

And in that fusilade I realized a subtle change. I could 
shoot now ; the awkwardness of the thing had gone ; the 
hang of squinting between those two hammers down the 
straight stock had somehow come to me. The knack of 
being able to hit implies something more than merely 
aiming; aiming, I suppose, is mechanical, but killing is 
psychological. I just knew that I could do it again at 
twenty yards. 

Then the second flock came in. They flew low, but miss- 
ing their leaders seemed not so disposed toward a sudden 
alighting. But they swung by in deadly range of my 
trench — a side shot — and though I knew that my old 
reprobate of a shot sprinkler spattered that flock from 
front to rear, yet but two birds came down, the first dead, 
the second to fall within a hundred yards. 

The third flock swung along, but evidently knew the 
game; missed their friends or had probably heard the 
voice of old Aristocrat, and so passed the field without 
offering to call. So I sat do-wn to await the coming of 
Greenhead. He is usually not due till near sunset. And 
watching a bright October day waning to its sunset close 



14 WILDFOWLING TALES 

here on the game-fields where one may see much wild 
life and little killing, is time spent not idly or amiss. For 
the eye and mind- on the qui vive there is always some- 
thing of interest; a snowy owl keeping vigil on a hay 
stack ; a flock of chippering Lapland Longspurs swirling 
about; a hurrying sharp-shinned hawk or a marauding 
northern shrike at his hunting. For there is a lot more 
in hunting upon the stubble-fields than in merely bring- 
ing old Wawa or Greenhead to a game pocket. 

Mallards Begin Moving. 

Toward sundown the mallards began moving. In long 
wavering strings they left the marshes and set out to 
northward, flying high and safely as to a far destination. 
It was good to see them go, just to watch them. At 
length I was startled out of my "Whither midst falHng 
dew" reverie by a sudden volley of shots, five or six in 
number, that came from behind a knoll a quarter of a 
mile to southwestward near the bend of the slough, and 
I saw a small flock of ducks there wriggling and reform- 
ing ranks. I had company. A small flight had started 
out in that direction and were drawing the compliments 
of at least three guns — the occupants of the automobile, 
I judged, that had passed that way an hour previously. 

Again and again small knots of ducks passed along 
behind that knoll to receive a volley of six shots and then 
go on to eastward. As far as I could see, no birds ever 
came down; lamentable shooting it seemed; for I doubt 
that there is a shooter alive who can look on as bad work 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT 15 

and not feel assured that he could wipe the other fellow's 
eye. It seemed that I was going to be slighted; but just 
a moment after I stretched out again in my trench I 
heard the unmistakable song of a mallard's wing and a 
big drake went by. 

He was craning his neck as he flew, surveying the field, 
evidently looking for a spot to enjoy a meal alone. I 
talked to him and he turned back in a moment and cir- 
cled. If there is one thing I can do fairly well it is talk 
to a mallard; that is the only language other than the 
mother tongue that I have ever been able to learn. But 
he was a solitary, wise old rascal with a curl in his tail. 
At his first circle he saw me and took a sudden fling; 
but because I did not move a winker he decided that he 
had been mistaken and presently came back. I dared 
not discuss the situation with him while he was headed 
in — he was fairly high anyhow — and I had perforce to 
always call him from the rear. 

''Come on dowm!" I coaxed. ''All kinds of fat eating 
here ; not a gun nearer than those of no-account fools be- 
yond the knoll. Come on down ! ' ' And he did come. He 
lowered all of a sudden and swung back fairly overhead. 
How he wriggled and bore skyward on the instant that 
I jumped. But my second barrel brought him down 
winged. 

Then a small flock came whiffling along from the west- 
ward and they were easy. It is always easier to pull 
conversational wool over the eyes of a flock than over 
the vision of one of those half -reputable old bachelors 



1 6 WILDFOWLING TALES 

or divorcee drakes out for a selfish, solitary time of it; 
and I called my new visitors in close and dropped an- 
other bird. Treachery; but I was playing Indian now 
and surely half fair at least. 

End of Day's Sport. 

Time was almost up. The yellow sun was burning half 
hidden below the prairie rim, when I saw two more ducks 
leave the slough and head toward the shooters behind 
the knoll. The usual six shoots rang out, and two badly 
scared birds swirled up and off to eastward, but turned 
nearer me than any of the other birds had done. Then I 
began to call — the loud quacking call at first to attract at- 
tention, and then the conversational gabble to touch their 
appetites. And they turned,, slowly at first, then veered 
over toward my field. Twice they circled wide, and I 
feared that I was out-generaled ; then when they were a 
hundred yards distant I let go a muffled jabber of my 
choicest mallard gossip and one bird answered with a 
gutteral jabber and the two lowered and came fairly at 
me. 

One with each barrel; and drakes at that! Hurrah 
for the Aristocrat! Then I put on my shooting coat, 
slipped four mallards into the pockets, tied the necks of 
four sleek geese securely in a neat bouquet, spread their 
heavy round bodies two and two across the back of my 
neck and staggered off toward the road. 

''Gee!" said the driver of the auto, as I climbed in 



A MANITOBA DUCK HUNT 



17 



over the road door, "you hunt like an Indian, but you 
get 'em." 

I tucked my feet among a cart-load of ducking para- 
phernalia — everything pretty much save a metal punt 
was in that tonneau — and then inquired what luck. They 
had been out all day; those men, three guns, an auto, and 
the paraphernalia, and now were returning to Brandon 
without a feather. 

''Tough luck," I said, as I climbed out in town, ''but 
next time get a pair of hiking shoes, borrow a good old 
blunderbuss of English extraction and try it my way — 
Indian fashion." 




AT THE DUCK ISLAND PRESERVE 



WILLIAM C. HAZELTON 



PASSING- years have given the writer many enjoy- 
able days on the marsh and in the blind, but he 
most esteems those spent the first part of Novem- 
ber during the past season as the guest of Daniel 
Voorhees, president of the Duck Island Preserve on the 
Illinois Eiver. . Fortunate indeed is the sportsman who 
has an opportunity to be entertained by such a sterling 
sportsman and at such a splendid resort for waterfowl. 
He is assured of the cream of wildfowl shooting and that 
everything will be done for his personal comfort. , 

That was during the first week of November, and 
I had just finished a trip of 175 miles down the Illinois 
River alone in a ducking boat, hunting on the way. This 
was the second time I had made the trip. I started from 
Morris, the first town on the upper river. The Duck 
Island Preserve lies 32 miles below Peoria. There are 
about 25 clubs on the river and this is one of the best. 
The total length of the river is nearly 350 miles, entirely 
mthin the State of Illinois. 

I was to visit the club on invitation of Daniel Voorhees, 
the president. 

''Would you like to see the lake?" said a friendly 
pusher at the Duck Island club house, where I was await- 

i8 



AT THE DUCK ISLAND PRESEEVE 19 

ing the return of Daniel Voorhees. A member of the 
club had come in with a broken gun and this young man 
had been his guide. 

On my assuring him that I would, together we walked 
down the path through an opening in the trees leading 
from the club house to where a narrow channel ran in 
from the main lake. On the shore was an obser\^ation 
tower from which one could locate the flight of waterfowl 
at a distance with a pair of field glasses. 

Ideal Day For Ducks. 

Before us were acres of the American lotus, their huge 
leaves waving in the strong northwest wind. An ideal 
day for ducks, clouds of which were hovering over the 
open waters of the lake, and others at rest on its bosom, 
which glistened in the November sun. Large flocks were 
constantly trading back and forth from the Clear Lake 
Outing club grounds, which lie across the river, and the 
Duck Island club. The ducks were high on these flights 
to clear the enormous oak trees which border both sides 
of the river. 

As we stood on the shore of the lake a flock of green- 
wing teal went whizzing by us over the swaying lotus 
beds, swirling and drifting as caught by the wind and 
fighting their way into the teeth of the gale like so many 
erratic jacksnipe. They are surely the speed boys. 

The view of the lake was one of great beauty and car- 
ried me back to the earliest recollections of the sport. 
Could any sportsman view such a beautiful scene without 
having his blood stirred and his heartbeats quicken! 



20 WILDFOWLING TALES 

The Start Next Morning. 

''You won't need any decoys," I was assured the next 
morning, as I started down the lake in company with 
two other boats containing Dr. Lewis and Judge Carpen- 
ter of Chicago and their pushers. I myself was hunting 
alone. 

After proceeding down the lake nearly a mile, we fol- 
lowed a channel into the goose pond, where my com- 
panions located and I pressed on a few hundred yards 
further into the dead overflowed timber. There were 
little patches of buckbrush here and there and water 
covered all this part of the club's domain. Contrary to 
general belief, water does not rot the timber. 

Large numbers of mallards and gray ducks, which had 
been routed out by our approach, now began to return. 
My boat was partially concealed by a few trees standing 
upright. I made no attempt to build a blind as it was 
unnecessary. Some of the keen-eyed mallards would see 
me at times, of course, especially when swinging nearly 
overhead. 

My first shot at a single gray duck was missed and my 
thought was that it was foolish of me to shoot at him at 
all. Thus one salves one's conscience for a rniss. Then 
I did better, getting three straight, all single birds, two 
gray ducks and a fat mallard hen. A few flocks of pin- 
tails circled around, but these long-necked and wise birds, 
often when headed directly toward me and I expected to 
certainly get a shot, would veer off before reaching me 



AT THE DUCK ISLAND PRESEEVE 21 

just enough to put them safely out of range. I felt that 
it would be straining the gun to shoot at them. Besides, 
there were plenty of other ducks to be had. 

Tries For Some Mallards. 

I would try for some mallards. Here comes a pair 
and why not make a double. I failed, though, getting 
my first bird only. 

Here comes a mallard hen and she is apparently de- 
termined to alight in a little opening just in front of me 
without any precautionary circles. Her wings were 
cupped in close to her body as she lowers directly facing 
me. There was no warning for her. She never saw me. 
I made a center shot on her and she dropped with a 
tremendous splash. 

Well, so the day continued with a succession of hits 
and misses. I made a few good shots and some poor 
ones. I was glad no one was near to see some of the 
misses. It would not have added to my reputation as a 
marksman. 

Strange Happening Occurs. 

Just before I had my limit, an unusual and amusing 
incident occurred. It seems hardly credible, but is true. 
It was the first time in my life I ever had it happen. I 
would not have objected to a spectator this time. 

A single mallard drake approached me with the wind 
at a good speed and pretty well up in the air. He was 
perhaps 45 or 50 yards high. I fired at him just before 



22 WILDFOWLING TALES 

he was immediately overhead. He fell with great force 
directly into the boat, with a resounding crash. He 
barely missed me. Had he been winged, the force with 
which he struck the boat would have killed him. A good 
idea, this dropping them in the boat, if one could do it 
with certainty. 

After bagging two more birds, I had the legal limit 
of fifteen birds, eight mallards and seven gray ducks 
(gadwalls) and wended my way back to the club house, 
arriving about 2 o'clock, and found about all the hunters 
had returned, each with the limit. 

So ended my first day at this glorious resort of water- 
fowl, and it is one which will linger long in my memory. 

Lotus Beds Rare Feature. 

The feature of the Duck Island Preserve which first 
attracts your interest is the immense beds of American 
lotus. The lotus has played an important part in ancient 
history and art. The whole story of creation, the genesis 
and fulfilment of life are imaged in this beautiful plant 
that takes its rise from the lowliest places, passes 
through dark and troubled waters, yet brings to maturity 
a pure, a spiritually perfect flower. The' lotuses or 
nelumbians, gigantic in size, exquisite of hue, delicately 
perfumed, easily hold a foremost place among aquatic 
flowers. Their brown seed pods, rising above the waters 
after the flowers have gone, are so strikingly decorative 
none can pass them unobserving. 



AT THE DUCK ISLAND PRESER\^ 23 

Nelumbians differ from water lilies in that they lift 
both leaves and blossoms high above the water. Water 
lilies float serenely upon the water, tugging at their 
stems like moored boats. Lotuses spring well above the 
water like huge gulls rising for flight. 

The entire Duck Island Preserve is covered by a per- 
manent federal injunction, putting it under the charge of 
the United States marshals of the state. This prevents 
poaching. Poachers that have been caught in the past 
have been convicted and severely sentenced. The last 
two with $100 fine and imprisonment. 

Participating at the sport at the club while I was there 
were Daniel Voorhees, Dannie, Jr., and C. J. Sammis of 
Peoria, Senator Alderson of Pekin, Judge George A. 
Carpenter, Dr. Thomas H. Lewis, C. W. Stiger, Russell 
Tyson and W. W. Wheelock of Chicago. Truly a coterie 
to gladden the heart of a sportsman and who added 
much by their companionship. 

Dannie, Jr., Is Crack Duck Shot. 

Dannie, Jr., is a crack duck shot. He was shooting a 
Parker 10-gauge with 34-inch barrels and brought ducks 
down with precision from a considerable height. Dannie 
has shot ducks since 6 years of age. He is beside one of 
the best traps shots in America, making many fine scores 
the past few seasons at both live birds and inanimate 
targets. 

A strict rule at this progressive club is that only one 
gun is allowed in a boat and the guide or pusher is not 



24 WILDFOWLING TALES 

peimitted to shoot. This restricts each member to 
fifteen birds. The rule might well be followed at other 
preserves. 

Each evening in the spacious living room, by an open 
fireplace, drawing for location for the next day's sport 
would take place, a custom of the club for many years. 

Not a single magazine or automatic gun was in evi- 
dence, and I believe their use is prohibited. 

Mallards seemed to predominate on the club territory, 
with gray ducks next in profusion. An excellent bird, 
the gray duck. 

Daniel Voorhees is held in affectionate reverence and 
esteemed as a brother individually by every member of 
the club. Their loyalty was ever apparent. 

Here 's long life to the Duck Island club and the prince 
of sportsmen, Daniel Voorhees ! 




THAT POND IN THE HILLS 



JOHN B. THOMPSON 



SURELY this narrative may be attributed to the log 
fire in my cozy cabin. Like all log fires, it is an 
arch tyrant at stirring up reminiscence. I stare 
passively at its alternating serene and spasmodic light, 
then suddenly it takes hold of my mind and leads 
my thought into active visualization of marshes, lakes 
and heavily timbered swamps. Only an instant I en- 
deavor to resist, but quickly yield to the soothing 
warmth of the room and its beautiful soft yellow 
luxuriance. Each tiny flame of the hardwood fire has 
its influence, perhaps fitful as sometimes is the duck 
flight. Then anew, a steady, sprewing, sibilant, gaseous 
jet of light attracts my attention, and it recalls nothing 
so much as a similar log heap in front of a camp I visit 
yearly in a somewhat unknown ducking territory way 
back in the Ozark hills. 

Refer to a swift mountain stream as a place where 
ducks are plentiful, and you only stir up incredulity. 
Once I was constructed along those lines ; I judged every- 
thing by precedent; en\dronments I had heretofore fre- 
quented. But now I know that the Red Gods do not for- 
get hill streams entirely. There are ducks to be found 

25 



2.^ WILDFOWLING TALES 

somewhere along them in season, if you are only fortu- 
nate enough to discover the proper place; such was the' 
lannouncement Billy Green, my Ozark guide, made. 

Up that ubiquitous, cross-fringed, crystal-clear, swift 
Current River Billy and I poled toward the deer country. 
All that day's work had been of a gruelling nature ; Billy 
at the stern with long-handled, steel-shod paddle g-uiding 
the rakish johnboat, and I in front assisting my utmost 
with a strong sassafras pole. And that sturdy, imper- 
turbable, gray-eyed Ozarker set the pace so fast that I 
had slight leisure to contemplate the landscape until we 
approached our first night's camping place. 

Rare Beauty of Ozark Scenery. 

Toward evening slowly, but much to my joy, we 
achieved a long swift shoal, which Billy announced would 
terminate the day's work. Just as we drifted in grat- 
ingly among the coarse gravel of the bar, I gazed ahead 
at the encircling altitudes of pine and hardwood. Such 
transcendent coloring of the fall-painted foliage I have 
never seen equalled, and, many times as I had beheld it, 
I was amazed at its splendor. I stared, unable to give 
voice to my pleasure, for something more pertinent held 
me spellbound. Crossing from east to west, almost shim- 
mering in the fading pink of sunset, but a small distance 
over craggy altitudes, was one single mile-wide mass of 
wildfowl in flight. Immediately I recalled Billy's tales, 
and I knew I was somewhere close to his promised duck- 
ing ground. 



THAT POND IN THE HILLS 27 

One has only to conjure a large typical mountain 
stream that knows not peaceful water, a veritable pent- 
up, angry river, that fruitlessly and incessantly beats it- 
self against flint-rock barriers, to get an idea of Current 
River. At the subsidence of a particularly long sweep of 
fast shoal water on the west side a huge hump-backed 
bluff bearing the name Buffalo rises abruptly amidst the 
timbers and water. A small creek creeps along its north 
rampart and ends in a large round blue pool of still water 
as it meets Current River, altogether conveying the pic- 
ture of a gigantic pan. Were this pool estimated ac- 
cording to rural measurements it would contain about 
and acre and a half of water. 

Great Bands of Wildfowl Appear. 

The very morning that Billy and" I paddled up to it 
along the sunny side of Buffalo I fancied that all the 
ducks in the world had been subjected through some mir- 
acle to a kind of baling process, and had been dumped 
into that hole. Nothing else could explain how the im- 
mense number of ducks could have crowded into it. I 
never fired a single shot. I was too astonished, and 
gazed for fully ten minutes open-mouthed, as I beheld 
the ludicrous efforts of the wildfowl to get into flight. 
Seemingly each duck interfered with another, so close 
had they been packed, at their inebriate efforts to fly. 

"Reckon we hadn 't better kill nothin ' but greenheads, ' ' 
questioned Billy. Perplexed, like myself, he was taking 
into consideration the vast amount of ducks that were 



28 WILDFOWLING TALES 

already attempting a return to their beloved pond. ''If 
we don't, shootin' won't last long. We will have too 
durned many any other way. ' ' 

An Ozarker's classification of ducks is according to 
his own ideas; the opinions of naturalists count for 
naught. It is folly to contradict a native of the hills. 
Every drake mallard is classified ''greenhead," and 
every hen mallard, pintail, widgeon, or gadwall, or what- 
ever it is, undergoes the appellation of mallard, except 
*'woodies," wood ducks and teals. They solve the prob- 
lem of meaning every other sort of drake with the un- 
contradictable name of "duck," notwithstanding males 
of other species have heads with coloring suggestive of 
sex, although it is entirely unregarded by the hill billies. 

When we had completed a very poor blind, contrived 
out of willow and sycamore bough laden with brown 
leaves, we were stationed very close to the pond. The 
flight apparently was every bit as extensive as on the 
previous evening. It was inexplicable what particular 
charm that pond had for ducks. For long distances we 
could espy them toward the north and east, but from 
the south Buffalo concealed their movements, as well as 
the bottom timber toward the west. 

Strange Actions of Waterfowl. 

It was certainly an interesting sight to observe the be- 
havior of wildfowl. Most rushed in from the northwest, 
and with no preliminary circlings, cupped wings, let loose 
and pitched for the pond. No doubt they were not blind- 



THAT POND IN THE HHLS 29 

wary, for they never detected our presence until we 
shouted and opened up on the greenheads. I am positive 
they never expected a glimpse of man in that extreme 
corner of the Irish wilderness. We got many green- 
heads, for mallards were abundant. I shot a twenty, and 
Billy did fine execution with his far-ranged twelve, L. C. 
Smith. But he boasted so much, however, on the merits 
of that famous gun, that I got him to betting on his skill ; 
for in selecting greenheads alone, we frequently had 
goose eggs charged against our score. 

At times ducks were actually perverse about returning 
to the pond; though after we grew so careless, we took 
no advantage of the concealment the blind afforded. 
Then they would come upon us unexpectedly. Some that 
had been driven by our fire abruptly appeared around 
the bend of Buffalo Bluff. Others slipped into our midst 
through the grove of sycamores on the west. Mallards, 
however, never came that route ; perhaps because we had 
featured them too strenuously they were more wary. 
But many of them visited our decoys of dead ducks. 

As I recall the day as accurately as my log fire sug- 
gests, Billy and I were even on the kills. We somewhat 
appeased our pricking consciences by promising to pre- 
vent waste by donating most of our ducks to the timber 
camps scattered along the river. It would make a wel- 
come repast for the men after a continuous menu of sow 
belly, corn bread, molasses and fox squirrels. 

At noon the flight entirely ceased. Our betting had 



30 WILDFOWLING TALES 

come to an end. But as we were even, we decided on re- 
maining a little while longer. No doubt we could decide 
the winner on the arrival of another flock. 

The Lone Shoveller. 

How, unseen or unheard, that shoveller ever got into 
the pond, neither could explain. Billy and I discovered 
him simultaneously, swimming about leisurely twenty 
yards from our blind, evidently perfectly contented with 
the surroundings. He certainly anticipated no danger. 
No alertness marked his deportment; rather perfect un- 
concern. ^ 

''Greenhead?" *'Naw," the Ozarker exclaimed. 
"Spoonie — spoonbill," I corrected. ''Spoonie, noth- 
ing!" after closer examination Billy irrefutably de- 
clared, "hits nary a greenhead, hits a duck." 

"Yes, Billy, it's a duck," I agreed, and added, "by all 
means a duck. Whatever kind you want to call it, its 
the last shot. Its on the left, swimming toward me. My 
shot. So I win, see." Then I yelled at that broadbill at 
the top of my voice. 

According to savants, bluewings and canvasbacks have 
it on every kind of ducks in speed. I am sure none of 
them ever estimated the velocity attained by a thoroughly 
frightened shoveller. The moment that spoonie heard 
my voice he turned a little, took instant alarm at our 
blind, but rose slowly, as if in no haste whatever to get 
away from such evil sounding noise. He achieved the 
first 20 yards in a manner that made me think him 



THAT POND IN THE HILLS 



31 



a cripple. Then he caused me suddenly to change my 
opinion, hitting it up into unbelievable speed. 

Still I felt confident, exultant in the prowess of my 
twenty gauge. I fired twice. A single feather was my 
recompense. But I did gaze in chagrin at that speed 
devil eating up distance; 40, 50, 60, perhaps 70 or 80 
yards. He gained far more rapidly than I could esti- 
mate. Then the 12 L. C Smith of the Ozarks sounded 
the note of exploding nitro powder. 

All at once the shoveller crumpled up and crashed 
stone dead against a sycamore top across Current River. 




AN ALBERTA DAY 



PAUL E. PAGE 



PUSHING my boat into a point of nislies in an 
Alberta lake in the gray of a frosty September 
morning last fall, there was a tinkle of breaking 
ice and a shower of white frost from the rushes as the 
boat pressed them to one side. 

I had set out my decoys consisting of nine ducks, no 
two alike, and one black sea brant. These I had bor- 
rowed from the farmer with whom I was stopping, who 
told me he had had them from his father, who used them 
on the salt water marshes, years before, in eastern Can- 
ada. One was interesting to me, it being made out of 
cork with a wooden head fastened to the body with two 
copper nails, with ends split and driven through the 
body and clinched over the weight lead on the bottom. 
It was about the size of a bluebill but what it was painted 
to represent I could not guess, as I never before saw any 
bird like it either awake or in dreams. 

In front of my blind was an open strip of water, per- 
haps eighty yards wide. To the north this open water 
extended for a quarter of a mile and to the south a good 
half mile. Back of me was a solid bed of rushes clear to 
the shore of the lake cut through by one narrow strip of 

32 



AN ALBERTA DAY 33 

water through which I had made my way to the blind. 
Out in front and beyond the fringe of rushes that bor- 
dered the strip of open water there was a continuation 
of rushes and open patches of water for nearly a mile. 
The map showed the lake to cover some five thousand 
acres. 

To the south and distant some two miles was another 
grass lake of about the same size and to the east another 
of about two hundred acres. 

I had come to the lake the evening before over the 
protest of friends who told me that there was never any 
shooting on this lake. The location looked good to me 
on the map and I came in spite of protests. My farmer 
host told me the evening before that there were a few 
ducks and now and then a flock of geese on the lake, 
but not many. 

Waiting for Legal Sunrise. 

I amused myself waiting for the legal sunup, by watch- 
ing the eastern sky. It was a riot of color of ever chang- 
ing position of clouds. At last came the rim of the sun 
above the horizon and in a moment it hung a big red ball 
above the rushes and the realization of a duck hunter's 
dream was mine. Sunrise and a grass lake in the wilder- 
ness of a duck country. Not a bird was to be seen, not 
even a blackbird. 

I watched every foot of the skyline of that marsh for 
an hour or more and not a living thing did I see. 

I thought of the long hard drive I had made over im- 



34 WILDFOWLING TALES 

possible roads and the protests of ray friends and of the 
return drive and the *'I told you so's" I would have to 
meet. 

I pictured my friends lea^dng the house at about this 
time for a day with the sharp-tail grouse and was truly 
sorry for myself. Had it not have been for that detail 
map and my stubborn resolve to see that lake, I would 
have been in the grouse party. The sun was creeping up 
and every creep sent a wave of warmth through the 
frosty air. My heavy shooting coat became uncomfort- 
able and I took it off, and later sweater, gloves and liat 
followed suit. I was just comfortable in a heavy flannel 
shirt, wide open at the neck, rubber boots kicked off and 
piled with coat, sweater, hat and gloves in the end of the 
boat. 

An ideal lake, day and month and no ducks. I was the 
most lonesome and disappointed chap in all Alberta. 

Waterfowl Now Appear. 

Suddenly my ear caught the faint '*Eleke-ela" of a 
bunch of brant. High up over the center of the lake they 
came, their white wings scintillating in the bright sun- 
shine. When opposite me they pitched down in a tangled 
mass of outstretched legs and necks, and woke the echoes 
with their chatter. 

This unseemly disturbance of the quiet morning ap- 
peared to get on the nerves of a hen mallard who was 
probably having a day dream out in the rushes beyond 
my blind. At any rate she got up with a loud quack of 



AN ALBERTA DAY 35 

protest and started up the lake screaming her opinion of 
the whole brant family and of that particular bunch. 
As she flew and talked other ducks followed her from the 
rushes and in a twinkling a hundred flocks were on the 
wing. These flying down the center of the lake woke up 
the laggards in the south end and they rose in a mass and 
came whirling over the rushes and up the lake. 

My first shot doubled up a lone widgeon and at the re- 
port of the little 16-gauge, ducks jumped from the rushes 
as far as the eye could see. They came by me in singles, 
doubles, flocks and droves. Great flocks of blue-winged 
teal swept by over the open water, hundreds in a flock 
and less than 40 yards from the blind. Big grain-fed 
mallards flew by and over the blind and looked down in 
wonder at this unknown invader of the marsh that was 
making so much noise. There were redheads in bunches, 
platoons and brigades. Birds that had never seen a man 
or heard the report of a gun. 

A Speedy Canvasback. 

From far dovvii the lake I spotted a canvasback com- 
ing up flying close to the water. He passed me and al- 
though I led him all of eight feet at not over 40 yards 
distance I saw the shot strike in a bunch all of 40 feet 
behind him. He was away out of range before I could 
get in another shot. This chap was some speed king, all 
right. He fairly burned up the air. I saw him alight at 
the upper end of the open water where he commenced 



36 WILDFOWLING TALES 

diving and feeding, and I kept a watchful eye in that 
direction. 

While I was wondering why he did not burn his 
feathers off with the friction of the air, back he came. 
It must have been the same bird for no two birds could 
have been made on his plan. I decided I would send a 
charge of shot directly in front of him as he was coming 
head on, jump him up a little and get him as he jumped. 
.1 did but he did not. Instead of jumping he speeded up 
and I was not fast enough to get in the second shot. He 
evidently tired of mj^ game for he did not come back. 
If I had anything but slough water I would have rested 
my foot on the side of the boat and murmured, **Here^s 
to you, old chap." 

While watching a bunch of these coming down the lake 
I heard a low "Honk" behind me and turned just in 
time to see a big Canada goose coming head on from 
behind me and just clearing the rushes. 1 nearly tipped 
the boat over in my effort to get a shot at him and did 
center him after he had flown directly over me at not 
over four feet from my head, and as he was going from 
me. In spite of the number 1 shot he doubled up a bunch 
and fell in the edge of the rushes out in front of me, from 
where he slowly drifted into the rushes. 

I was some lousy, however. I picked my shots from the 
hundreds of birds that were almost constantly in range 
and flattered myself for doing good work. I ripped into 
a flock of brant that came down the lake, low down, and 
that turned in to have a look at my sea brant decoy, and 



AN" ALBERTA DAY 37 

while they were making goose talk about sea brant in 
general, and got three. They were bunched up at about 
30 yards, and I put the first shot into the flock at large 
and knocked out one. I would like to know where the 
rest of the ounce of shot in the load went. It did not 
register and yet the birds could not have been bunched 
closer. 

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a 
bluebill making a sneak from behind me and turned in 
time to double him up and send him with a splash and 
bound to keep company with my big goose. He hit the 
water close to where the goose had drifted and much to 
my surprise here was Mr. Goose sitting up on the water 
with neck outstretched apparently as wide awake as he 
ever was. I wanted that goose and pushed the boat out 
of the blind and poled after him. He could and did swim 
as fast as I could pole the boat and after chasing him up 
the lake for two hundred yards or more and not getting 
within range, I decided to cut through the fringe of 
rushes and stalk him from the other side and out of his 
sight. We met head on at the end of the rushes and up 
he sprang not six feet from the bow of the boat. It 
took three ounces of number 7 shot to stop him. I 
picked him up and decided to gather up my other goose 
and a number of ducks I had in the water before return- 
ing to the blind. I shot three mallards, all greenheads, 
from the boat while on my return. 



38 WILDFOWLING TALES 

Strange Actions of a Goose. 

When I got to where the bluebill fell I had trouble in 
locating him but at last found him and not ten feet from 
him lay my first goose. The last goose must have swum 
or flown in without my seeing him and I mistook him 
for the one I had shot. Just why a normal goose would 
let me chase him for three hundred yards and nearly run 
over him with a boat, in open water, before flying, is one 
of the many strange duck-blind adventures I am unable 
to fathom. 

I got back to the blind in time to see that canvasback 
person at the upper end of the open water, get up and 
start my way. I got into swing with him 60 yards 
before he was in range, led him all of 40 feet at about 
40 yards distance and as near as I could tell got him 
in plumb center of the charge. He never missed a wing- 
beat and sailed on to the lower end of the open water 
and out of my sight. 

There is a murie on the sound where I shoot that does 
some flying stunts and burns holes in the air and is sup- 
posed to outfly anything with wings and I vouch for his 
being able to go some. There are green-winged teal that 
move somewhat when they decide to go some place, but 
this canvasback friend of mine could fly rings around 
either of them. He sure could fade away and out of the 
landscape faster than anything I have ever seen. 

In an hour I had enough, more than enough, and put 
away the 16-gauge and took up the 22-automatic. I did, 



AN" ALBERTA DAY 39 

however, keep the shotgun close at hand where I could 
grab it in case that greased lightning of a canvasback 
took a notion to try another round with me. 

Duck Shooting On the Wing With a Rifle. 

Did you ever shoot ducks on the wing with a 22-rifle'? 
Some shooting and some sport where the birds don't 
know what a gun or man is. 

I covered that lake with chunks of lead. Sometimes, a 
few times, I got a bird I shot at and several times one 
that got in the way and that I did not shoot at, I did 
get into the Wild Biil-Dr. Carver class v/ith a big Canada 
honker. He came drifting down the lake and when oppo- 
site me at about 30 yards and 50 feet high I cut into 
him. He staggered and fell a few feet, gathered himself 
and started directly away from me. I shot again and 
again he twisted and fell but gathered himself up and 
turned in and towards me and crossed to fly around me 
and back up the lake. I got him on the turn with the 
third shot and he came down in a lump. I dressed him 
later and found one shot went through his breast just 
below his neck, one through his back and out at the vAsh- 
bone and another through his body in front and close to 
his legs. 

The next shot I doubled up a redhead and nearly 
landed him in the boat from a straight overhead at all 
of 60 yards. 

I was sure some rifle shot just then. Later I changed 
my mind about it. 



40 WILDFOWLING TALES 

Once in a while when a bunch of mallards swung in to 
have a closer look at my bunch of outlaw decoys I got 
results and once I made a double out of a flock and these 
did not come in any too good either. 

It is amazing the amount of room that there is around 
a big duck. I could pick out a certain feather on one of 
those big mallards and shoot at that one feather at 30 
yards and nothing doing. I might do the same thing at 
the next bird and get its partner flying several feet be- 
hind it and perhaps, but not often, I would get so close 
to that particular feather that I w^ould commence talk- 
ing to myself and wondering how Dr. Page would sound. 

Swans Come Into Lake. 

While busy spattering lead over the landscape the 
beautiful trumpet call of a swan came to me and held me 
spellbound. Four of these great birds were coming into 
the lake from the south. They started my way and I 
dropped the rifle ; no, not for the shotgun, but the camera. 
On they came, wheeled in behind me and started for the 
blind not four feet over the grass. 

I twisted and turned and tried my best to get those 
birds in the finder but could not do so although they 
swung out over the clear water not 40 yards from me. 

I fooled for a hour or more trying my luck with ducks 
of all kinds and one splendid chance at a large flock of 
brant but the best I got was some dots that looked like 
fly specks. All the rest developed blanks. 



AN ALBERTA DAY 4 1 

If I ever hit that lake again I am going to have some 
kind of a camera gun that I can point at a bird and get 
results. I tired of the camera and took up the 22 again. 

A great number of swans came into the lake and lit. 
They came from the south and high up. They evidently 
were coming in for water and for the night. 

One bunch of eight sandhill cranes came in and lit on a 
mud bar. 

One big swan, I believe he would have measured 9 feet 
from wing tip to wing tip, came by the blind at not over 
20 yards and less than that number of feet from the 
water. I covered him with the rifle and I know I could 
have hit the feather I aimed at and my finger itched to 
pull the trigger. The Alberta law says hands off of swan 
and crane and it was hands off with me. 

Runs Out of Shells. 

There is an end to everything and the end came for 
me when I ran out of 22 shells. 

I shot 250 and got fourteen ducks and one goose. Not 
much of a record, and yet some record. Try it sometime. 

I picked up my ducks and poled to shore where I was 
met by my host. He looked over my back-breaking load 
of ducks and geese. I do not remember of saying how 
many ducks I shot with that shot gun. He said, ' ' If you 
want to get some good shooting, try Buffalo Lake. My 
brother lives there and I will give you a note to him. ' ' 

Some good shooting ! I wonder what he calls shooting. 
Two hundred and fifty picked shots at ducks at not over 



42 



WILDFOWLING TALES 



40 yards away, a few geese thrown in for good measure ; 
not quite as many shots with a shot gun, and a hundred 
or more flocks shot at and fluked at with a camera is 
some little day's shooting. 

If you have not already done so, try this rifle duck- 
shooting game sometime when you get where ducks are 
tame. No use to try it on birds that have been shot at 
until they are wild, as they jump too much and when they 
do, it is out of the question to get them covered and when 
you do get a bird under such conditions you do not feel 
as if you had done anything but a lucky fluke. 

Hurrah — ^my friends ran over their best dog and put 
him in the dry dock for a week and only got three sharp- 
tail. 

I am the duck sharp in that bunch right now and my 
map has moved up to the head of the class. 

There were no "I told you so's" when I got back that 
same evening. 




MILLIONS OF DUCKS 



CLARK McADAMS 



HE is a brave duck shooter who will take his family, 
his dog and a good duck-shooting friend along and 
try to make from St. Louis a point so far away as 
Corpus Christi, Tex,as, where he has a beautiful boat 
with a crew of four men placed at his disposal for the 
prosecution of this thrilling sport. 

I had the courage to try that, and we got there, dog and 
all, three days following Christmas, 1919, after a trip 
which none of us shall forget. We had the dog in the 
baggage car, and fed him ham sandwiches at 15 cents 
each all the way down. However, we made it. The dog, 
especially, was glad to get there. It was something more 
than a dog's life. The day trip down from Houston was 
enlivened by acquaintance with another duck shooter who 
lived some place below Corpus. His wife, who was with 
him, said he was ''an old huntin' fool," and was never 
home Sundays, which amused us — and him. 

We all know that type of man. This fellow had hunted 
in the Texas Coast country for years. He had crawled 
over half the Texas flat on his stomach. He had bearded 
pneumonia in many a wet boot, and his face had the 
weather-beaten look of one whose home is the blind. We 
saw ducks in every pond and puddle along the way. Once 

43 



44 Wn^DFOWLING TALES 

we saw a bunch of brant covering acres. They were sit- 
ting in a field not far from the train, and three duck 
shooters ahnost fell out of the window estimating their 
number. We could not agree on it, so I cannot tell you 
how many there were. 

A Magnificent Yacht. 

Mr. Pulitzer, who knew what would cure me — I had 
been ill for a month — had sent his yacht, the Granada II, 
down from Rockport. It was lying in the bay at Corpus 
when we got there. It was a beautiful specimen of the 
art of boat building. It carried a skipper, an engineer, 
a sailor and a cook. We got there in the evening, 
and lay there that night, having dinner in the dining 
saloon, whence we looked out on the wreck of the great 
summer storm which had ravaged the coast a few months 
before and dealt a terrible blow to Corpus Christi, now 
rising courageously from her ruins. 

The Captain said we would see plenty of ducks. There 
were millions of them — which we could not, of course, 
comprehend at the time, having never seen ducks in any 
such numbers. 

Well, we were to see them. You know how a duck 
shooter sleeps in that pleasant prospect. There was just 
enough of a swell to rock us to sleep. Strangely enough, 
I began to feel better the moment the Captain told me 
how many ducks we would see, and that night I slept as 
I had not slept in a month. We were under way when I 
got up the next morning. The Corpus Bay is fifteen by 



MILLIONS OF DUCKS 45 

twenty miles in extent — a blue and beautiful piece of 
water, now shining under a summer sun. Bluebills, 
which do not object to diving upwards of fifteen feet for 
their feed, rose ahead of us and circled past the windows 
while we were at breakfast. Porpoises rolled out of the 
water around us. Of course, we were not having a good 
time or anything like that, and were not exclaiming the 
pelicans, plover, cormorants and the profusion of wild 
life which one sees on the Texas Coast in winter. 

Vast Number of Waterfowl. 

It was 11 o'clock when we lay to beside an oyster flat 
twenty miles above Corpus. The Captain picked up his 
glasses and studied a black mass on the flat a mile away. 

'* There's a pretty good bunch of ducks," he said. 
''We'll shoot them this afternoon." 

Ben and I looked at them. 

"How mjmy ducks would you say are there?" Ben 
asked the Captain. 

The man who knows more about ducks than ducks know 
about themselves, took the glasses again and swept the 
bunch. 

"About thirty thousand," he said. 

I caught Ben, who would have fallen overboard. 

Thirty thousand ! 

We all looked at them — ^my wife and Elizabeth. Even 
Prince surveyed them and wagged his tail. They were 
on a flat where the water was only inches deep, and were 
feeding upon the grass which grows under water all over 



46 WILDFOWLING TALES 

those flats. They pull it up and eat the roots, which make 
them so fat that oftentimes, dropping from a consider- 
able height, they literally pop open. 

We have become so accustomed to reading how ducks 
are slaughtered in the south through the winter months 
that we scarcely ever expect to see again any duck that 
goes down there. That is for the most part myth. It is 
quite true that ducks are abundant in winter throughout 
the south — I have seen great shoals of them in the Bay 
of Panama in February — but that is a vast country in 
which to range, hunters are comparatively few, and, 
thanks to the federal bird law, the markets are gone. In 
nine days on the Texas Coast we saw only one other hunt- 
ing boat. There were millions of ducks, but they were 
little hunted. The south earned its bad name fairly 
enough in the days before the federal government stepped 
in to do what state governments would not do. They 
still have more duck shooting than we have, since the 
ducks winter there; but conditions between a coast and 
an inland country cannot be equalized in shooting any 
more than they can be equalized in fishing, and the sea- 
son in the south is fifteen days shorter than it is with us. 
It opens November 1st, and ends January 31st. 

Nor is it true that duck shooting in the south is not 
work, just as it is here, or that it does not have its days 
when there is nothing to shoot. With all the ducks there, 
one is never with any assurance of getting very many of 
them. They either *Svork" or don't "work," as the 
guides express it. On days when they don't work there 



MILLIONS OF DUCKS 47 

would just as well not be any ducks. One sees them in 
great clouds, but they never come near. 

It was after 1 o'clock when the launch came alongside 
for the hunt on the flat where the thirty thousand red- 
heads and pintail were w^aiting for us. We towed be- 
hind us the lighter boat with the hundred odd redhead 
decoys and the sprigs of sweet bay which are always 
stuck around the boat in that country to make a blind. 

We were all set by 2 o'clock. It was a lovely day, with 
a light breeze from the Gulf, the waters everywhere blue 
and dancing, the yacht lying white and serene a mile 
away in deep water. Prince gathered for the first falling 
duck, and an occasional bluebill trying to tempt us. 
They hold bluebills and spoonbills in contempt on the 
Texas Coast. 

"Dusty" as a Duck Caller. 

The center seat held "Dusty," who whistles at sprigs 
and sputters at redheads. "Dusty" whistling at sprigs 
is part of one's education upon these Texas trips. One 
learns by listening to him to know how near they are, 
what they are doing, and about what the chance or mis- 
chance has become. Thus, if "Dusty" begins whistling 
shrilly and then tones off into softer and even tender 
tones of seductiveness, one instinctively clutches one's 
gun and gets ready to shoot. Upon the other hand, if 
"Dusty" begins shrilly, tones off more gently for a bit 
and then becomes even more shrill, one knows the sprigs 
have started to come and then thought better of it. 



48 WILDFOWLING TALES 

''Dusty" is an artist, and the artist's temperament is 
his. He never gives up a bunch of sprigs without a final 
shrill whistle, a very blast of disgust, which seems to 
mean ''Damn you!" 

The scheme upon which ducks are hunted down there is 
to find them feeding upon a flat, chase them off, and then 
wait for them to return. That was what we did upon that 
first afternoon — we waited for them to return. Out on 
the flat below us somewhere were thirty thousand red- 
heads and pintail supposed to come back, but for an hour 
after we set out we did not see any sign that they were 
going to do so. It sometimes happens with such a bunch 
of ducks that when they come back they all come at once, 
and that was what they did upon this occasion. From a 
duckless sky our vision passed to the amazing spectacle 
of a sky covered by ducks. They came as straight for us 
as if they meant to resume feeding where they left off 
when we got them up. It was a thrilling moment in the 
little shelter of green bay, where two men and a dog 
waited feverishly for the game to come within range. 
"Dusty" began to whistle and sputter. Presently he 
said, in that calmness always noticeable about anyone in 
a blind who is without a gun : 

"Three redheads coming in on the right." 

We thrust our heads up cautiously. 

Z-z-z-z-z-p ! 

Ben sent two barrels after them, and I somehow came 
to in time to give them the left barrel far out. 

I got one which Prince was out after like a shot through 



MILLIONS OF DUCKS 49 

the side of the blind, and which he pounced upon in the 
clear water and fetched to us with that dispatch for which 
a duck shooter loves the trained Chesapeake. 

It was a redhead drake, a duck in that region even 
heavier than our own mallard, a beautifully-plumaged, 
fast-flying, delicious duck — the ne plus ultra of the Texas 
Coast. 

That was my opportunity to seem wise and expert, 
since I had shot down there before and Ben had not. 

''You'll get onto it,'' I said. "They fly faster than 
the ducks at home." 

Ben said nothing, but the look in his face prepared me 
for what happened upon several occasions thereafter, 
when he wiped my eye good for me. 

A Great Hour's Sport. 

Then the darkness of thirty thousand ducks came upon 
us, and we lit up the feathered dusk with the flash of 
our guns. It was the kind of ducksh noting one has 
always heard about. Prince flew here and there over the 
flat, catching the cripples and fetching the dead. He 
would start after a high-flying pintail when the duck 
began to slant down, and would fetch them an eighth of 
a mile. There was an hour when we were the busiest 
two, me and a dog, you ever heard tell of, when "Dusty" 
was whistling and sputtering like one of the paint pots 
in Yellowstone Park, and when there were always from 
fifty to a hundred flocks of ducks about. We had twenty- 
seven fat ducks in the boat when the launch put out from 



50 WILDFOWLING TALES 

the yacht to pick us up. It all happened in an hour, but 
what an hour! 

Ben and I relived that hour on the way back to the 
yacht. We have relived it many times since. When 
Prince is dozing, with his fine head upon his great 
webbed forepaws and his eyes half closed, he is reliving 
that hour, too. We are all hunters, whether men or dogs, 
and our sensations and memories are the same. 

It was something to see the sun set across Corpus Bay 
as we made our way back to the yacht that evening. It 
must have been that great golden sun, laying its mantle 
of gold upon the very Gulf itself, that betrayed the 
wealth of the New World to the lust of the Old. That 
was the sun of Cortez and Pizarro — the sun of the gal- 
leons and the conquistidores — the great, golden, tell-tale 
sun following which, from *'a peak in Darien," Balboa 
first looked upon the Pacific! 

Gray shadows of dusk were circling the yacht as we 
ran alongside and climbed the ladder to the deck. It 
had been chilly and wet out there as the launch bobbed 
about on the rising sea. You have felt the warmth and 
cheer of a club house upon coming in from a cold hunt. 
Then you can imagine the luxuriance at this hour of the 
Granada II, whose lights invited the hunter home from 
the chase, and where all was dry and snug for the night. 
You could hardly say Jack Robinson in the time it took 
us to step out of our rubber boots and our mackintoshes 
that night and line up around the table in the dining 
room, where (hush, boys!) we opened the ceremony with 



MILLIONS OF DUCKS 5 1 

a good Scotch highball. What is to become of duck- 
shooting now that one is supposed to give tliat sort of 
thing up? 

While we had been hunting the Captain had taken the 
dingy over to a flat where he saw the gulls and pelicans 
working in a school of mullet and caught a dozen fine 
sea trout. The mullet sees the flat, the trout sees the 
mullet, the gulls see the trout, and the fishermen sees the 
gulls. That was the way Prince and I figured it, after 
reflecting amusedly upon how we came by that delicious 
morsel at dinner this first day out. 

Sam's Skill as a Chef. 

Before dinner is served I must present Sam. The 
sight of Sam's black arm coming up out of the cook's 
galley and holding upon high a great platter of roast 
duck, or boiled crabs, or oysters upon the half shell, 
became so often the inspiration of shrill cries of delight 
in that dining saloon during the trip that I must tell you 
something of Sam, whose father cooked ducks for a club 
down there in years gone by and who was himself cook 
for an officers' mess with our army in France, 

I always said that Sam cooked for General Pershing 
— ^that while it was true the General had never come in 
for it, still it was there for him, and it was no fault 
either of Sam or Sam's cooking that he never came. 

He would have enjoyed it, for Sam is such a cook as 
one thinks of reverently upon rising from a display of 
his art. A great epicure is less than the cook who. 



52 WILDFOWLING TALES 

makes that reputation for liim. Thus, we know who 
Epicurus was; we know the friends attracted to his 
board, but we do not know who cooked the food that 
made him famous, any more than we know the hero of 
those repasts which Lucullus sei-ved to the undying glory 
of his name and the eternal estate of an art in admira- 
tion of which Horace burst into song and in awe of 
which the world has stood in awe for more than twenty- 
five centuries. 

I don't want anything of that sort to happen here. I 
want to do what neither Epicurus nor Lucullus was 
sportsman enough to do, and try to make Sam^s name 
live, as it deserves to live ; for throughout that voyage 
he made available a feast beside which that at which 
Belshazzar saw the handwriting upon the wall was no 
more than an early cafeteria. 

Nor was Sam's skill as a cook wasted upon the Texas 
Coast. When we lay beside one of the oyster flats we 
had only to go out and pick up fresh oysters in plain 
sight through the shallow water. We had only to take 
a sack and fill it with stone crabs drawn from their holes 
among the oyster shells by that quick flip of the wrist 
which renders this perilous sport nothing to the man 
who knows how to do it. We had only to fish about the 
boat to supply ourselves with sea trout and sheepshead. 
We had only to go hunting for ducks, and plover 
swarmed about us in such incredible numbers that we 
had only to walk along the shore and shoot what we 
could eat. 



MILLIONS OP DUCKS 53 

We Eat Some Ducks. 

That was what there was to cook. In nine days eight 
of us, counting the four men in the crew, ate eighty 
ducks. Ben usually ate two ducks at dinner. We picked 
the meat out of crabs until the claws and backs were 
piled up before us so high we couldn't see each other. 
Sometimes we began with oysters on the half shell, 
working on through crab gumbo, thence into cold boiled 
crabs, and then on to roast ducks. We were all fat 
enough to kill when we came off the boat. It was an 
incredible feast incredibly cooked, and it went on incred- 
ibly day after day. I don't want to torture you with 
it, so I shall say no more about it. 

The most ducks we killed in one day was forty-two. 
That day they came to us in a high wind which made 
shooting difficult enough to be great sport in spite of 
the fact that ducks were abundant. Once when a pair of 
pintails came in over the decoys Ben killed his duck and 
then killed mine while I was figuring my windage. You 
may be sure I cursed him for that. The windage is im- 
portant down there much of the time. It is amazing how 
far one must lead a duck going do^vn wind, and it is 
laughable to discover how easily one can shoot alongside 
a duck fairly hovering in the air. We experimented one 
windy day upon a target in the water. The wind swept 
the shot as if it were sand. Would you believe that a 
duck as big as a peacock and within fair range could be 
hard to hit out there in the sunshine, where you can see 



54 WILDFOWLING TALES 

the color of its eyes? Yet it can be so, and it does one 
good to find it out. We are all more or less expert at 
the particular shooting to which we are accustomed. It 
is when we encounter shooting to which we are not accus- 
tomed that we begin to have less faith in our natural 
unerringness and appreciate best what other men know. 
A Texan down there on the coast can shoot around us 
in the wind until we don't know whether we are afoot 
or horseback. 

Every day we were down there we saw the same in- 
numerable host of ducks. We could not use more than 
we could eat, so we shot only part of every day. The 
rest of the time we cruised about, or enjoyed our ease 
upon the yacht. It was on the last day that we really 
saw ducks. We thought we had seen ducks every day, 
but when we looked out across the flat that last morning 
we realized we had not seen any ducks up to that time. 

The Captain said the bunch we had before us was 
two and a half miles long and in some places half a mile 
wide. It looked as if all the redheads and pintail in the 
world had congregated to bid us farewell. We did not 
intend shooting that day, since we had all the ducks we 
could bring home. Nevertheless, we were on deck most of 
the time before we set sail for Corpus Christi, and much 
of that time was given to a pleasant survey of that 
astonishing field of ducks. 

There were literally millions of them! 

Even Prince said very plainly, wig- wagging his tail: 

"Some ducks!" 



MILLIONS OF DUCKS 55 

Apostrophe to the Duck. 

There was nothing to do but apostrophize them, so I 
did that. I stood on the deck of the yacht as we set out 
for home and said this to them: 

"Friends, redheads, pintails! 

"I and my wife, my child Elizabeth, my friend Ben 
and my dog Prince bid you farewell. 

"We have enjoyed meeting you, and hope sometime to 
see you again. 

"Meanwhile, peace be with you. 

"Take care of yourselves. 

"You are numerous, like the sands of the sea, and a 
lot of us have worked hard to make you like that. 

"We have tried to limit the sport of hunting you to 
the bounds of decency in our own country, and have in- 
duced Canada to do the same thing. 

"We have put the market hunter out of business. 

"We have closed the cold storage plant. 

"We have stopped raiding the breeding ground for 
duck eggs. 

"This is our reward — millions of ducks — ducks until 
one would not believe it except one saw it. 

"Hail, innumerable, inspiring and incredible host! 

"Hail, twice hail — 

"Hail and farewell!" 

That, I thought, met the occasion. We stood out across 
Corpus Bay, and presently the great flock of ducks two 



56 WILDFOWLING TALES 

miles and a half long became as a speck on the smiling 
face of the sea. We made Corpus Christi at noon, had 
our last lunch aboard, and then went ashore. 

Sympathizes With Adam. 

It was not until we stood on the wharf that afternoon 
and watched the Granada II disappearing across the blue 
bay on her way back to Rockport that I understood how 
Adam felt when he was kicked out of the Garden of 
Eden. 

I for the first time in my life felt as he did, and it 
was no surprise to me that so much of a rumpus has 
been raised about it. It really was something. 

What must one say of the number of ducks wintering 
upon that coast? Does it mean that ducks are increas- 
ing, and that after all the years of seeming to protect 
them but really getting nowhere we have at last found 
out how they can be saved — not for ourselves alone, but 
for men to come! 

I think that is what it means. The number of ducks 
everywhere in the country last Fall astonished every- 
body. Let us hope it prepared us for next Fall, when 
we otherwise probably would not believe it. 



OPENING DAY IN NORTH DAKOTA 



EDWARD C. WARNER 



THERE have been so many mournful laments of 
late regarding the passing of our waterfowl that 
sportsmen may welcome any evidence showing 
the duck hunter's "days of real sport" are still with us. 
It was my good fortune to enjoy one of the ''good old 
days" on September 16, 1920, on the North Dakota 
prairies way up near the Canadian boundary. 

With me in the party were Archie Sillers, banker, of 
Calvin, North Dakota ; James Shea, former United States 
marshal of North Dakota, and William Moran, hotel pro- 
prietor of Calvin. After a hurried 4 o'clock breakfast 
we started out in Mr. Sillers' auto for the fifteen-mile 
ride across the prairies. In passing, I would like to re- 
mark that anyone who has never experienced the exhilar- 
ation of the bracing Dakota air on a September morning 
has missed one of the real joys of life. Our destination 
was the farm of Joseph Webster, who had extended us 
an invitation to come out and open the season on his 
''duck pasture." 

We arrived at the farm just as the roosters were sound- 
ing their first clarion calls. Everyone piled out of the 
auto and I started toward the marsh, but someone in the 
party reminded me that it would be an hour before sun- 

57 



58 WILDFOWLING TALES 

rise. So we found a sheltered spot by the side of the 
barn and spent the time listening to "Jim" Shea recount 
experiences of nearly a half century back when he was a 
scout under Custer, and tell tales of the northwest when 
Dakota was still a territory, and you could travel forty 
miles without seeing a white man. 

Presently a pink glow began to appear in the east, and 
the wheat shocks across the slough took on a hazy shape. 
And then there was heard such a quacking and squawk- 
ing of mallards as though all the ducks in the world, in 
convention assembled, had gathered to refute the idea 
that the glorious days of the wildfowl were gone forever. 
And now our blood began to tingle in anticipation of 
what was in store for us. We got up and started for the 
marsh, each one solemnly adjuring the others not to shoot 
before the proper time. 

A Real Duck Paradise. 

The slough which ran through Mr. Webster 's farm was 
a continuation of a marsh about ten miles in length, filled 
with grass and rushes, and a paradise for mallards. Bill 
Moran and I stationed ourselves at one end of the slough, 
Jim Shea and Mr. Sillers going to the opposite end. By 
the time we had got set the sun had risen and a few mo- 
ments later a "boom, boom" came from a distant point 
at the head of the marsh. This was the signal for us to 
start. A pair of blue-wing teal came whizzing by and I 
made a "double." My great self-satisfaction was short- 
lived, however, as another pair which followed a moment 



OPENING DAY IN NORTH DAKOTA 59 

later was missed with both barrels. At the sound of the 
shots the ducks arose from the slough with a noise like 
the roar of a waterfall. In consternation at such an in- 
vasion of their domicile they flew over our heads in every 
direction, voicing their protests with an incessant quack- 
ing. The mallards flew away, returning later on in flocks 
varying from a half dozen to a hundred. I had found a 
dry spot where the rushes afforded a good natural blind, 
and for the next two hours had the best sport that I have 
ever known. There were teal, sprig, mallards and a 
few stray canvasback ; in fact, almost every kind of duck 
found on inland waters. 

There was no waiting for shots for more than a few 
moments. Moran and I had the good fortune to select 
the best location and the birds were so plentiful that we 
scorned the small ducks and waited for the mallards and 
other large ducks. After the first half hour, during which 
numerous misses afforded an equal number of opportuni- 
ties for mutual sarcastic comments, the "wire edge" was 
finally worn off. By 9 o'clock we had both secured al- 
most our limit, without counting a considerable number 
of birds which could not be found in the tall grass. My 
shells had run out and Bill's had dwindled to a mere half- 
dozen, which he insisted on sharing with me. If anyone 
can furnish a better illustration of the height of gener- 
osity than sharing your last half dozen shells when the 
greenheads are flying over in easy range, I should like 
to know what it is. 



6o WILDFOWLING TALES 

Forty-Nine Ducks Day's Bag. 

With remaining ammunition we finished our ''limits" 
and started for the farmhouse. As we arrived, our com- 
panions came in with fine bags, and we laid them in a 
common pile and counted them. There were forty-nine 
altogether, a large part of them mallards. We could 
easily have brought in as many more before noon. I 
spent a number of days at this same slough during the 
season and brought in, all told, nearly one hundred ducks. 
This marsh held an added attraction, in that there were 
jacksnipe in abundance, and if the ducks were not flying 
it was an easy matter to get the limit of "jacks" in an 
hour. In fact, on the opening day of the season they were 
so plentiful that one might have killed a couple of dozen 
simply by shooting them as they flew over, and without 
moving from the duck blind. 

On the evening of our first day's duck shoot I remarked 
to Bill Moran at the hotel that some time I was going to 
write up an account of the day's sport. *'Well," said he, 
"if you do, you won't need to color it up any; I guess 
nobody could write up just what we saw, but if he could 
it would make some of the old timers sit up and take 
notice." And I agreed with him. 

And so, let those who will, talk of the "good old days" 
of duck hunting. As for me, my "red letter" days date 
back only to September, 1920. 



DUCK SHOOTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 



ROBERT E. ROSS 



THE SPORT of duck shooting in Southern Califor- 
nia has seen many changes since the year 1887, 
when I first began shooting. In that year and for 
some time subsequently there were no laws of any kind 
protecting the birds, no bag limit, and, with one excep- 
tion, no duck clubs. 

In the immediate vicinity of Los Angeles there was 
then a good bit of marsh land, and a number of ponds 
and lakes, on which wildfowl of all descriptions were 
plentiful. 

The shooting was open to all who asked permission 
of the ranch owners, and who observed common decency 
in being careful of fences and cattle. 

At that time Los Angeles was a small town ; now it is 
a city of almost 700,000 souls. Many of the marshes and 
lakes have been drained, the open season is three and 
one-half months, the bag limit twenty-five, and practically 
the only shooting to be had near the city is on the pre- 
serves of the ducking clubs, of which there are now many. 

I have kept an almost unbroken record of my shooting 
for the past thirty-three years, and in looking over my 
old journals I am impressed by the way in which the 
shooting has kept up here. 

6i 



62 WILDFOWLING TALES 

The birds apparently are as plentiful as ever, though 
their feeding and resting grounds have been so much re- 
stricted of late years that fewer stop here throughout the 
Winter season than formerly. 

I shot for thirteen years in one club, which had a mem- 
bership of fifteen, when the total annual bag for the club 
probably averaged nine thousand duck. That was when 
the bag limit was fifty. That club is still shooting, and 
enjoying excellent sport, and its preserve is only an 
hour's run by motor car from Los Angeles. 

In the almost thirty years of its existence perhaps 
200,000 duck have been bagged on its preserve. 

Great Flight of Pintail. 

On September 1, 1917, I was shooting doves in a field 
near the coast about three miles south of Long Beach. 
For more than three hours that afternoon I watched an 
unbroken flight of southbound sprigs (pintails) traveling 
down the coast, and turning inland at a point a little 
less than a mile south of the field in which I was shooting 
doves. Yes, the ducks are still with us, and under the 
wise provisions of the Federal Migratory Bird Act, I 
think they will be for generations to come.- 

To give the eastern duck shooter an idea of Southern 
California duck shooting as it was in the good old days 
of the nineties, and as it is at present, I will select from 
my journals two days, which are perhaps typical of the 
sport then and now. 



DUCK SHOOTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 63 

Old-Time California Duck Shoot. 

In November of 1893 I was shooting in a club which 
had its preserve in Orange County, about sixty miles 
south of Los Angeles. The marsh was located on the 
banks of the Santa Ana River, about three miles inland 
from the coast. 

The preserve controlled by the Greenhead Club was 
only a few hundred acres in extent, but the marsh of 
which it is a part spread out for thousands of acres — tule 
land, threaded with sloughs and dotted with ponds and 
"holes" in the tules. 

The club house was located on the southerly side of 
the marsh, on the edge of a line of low bluffs that formed 
the southerly boundary of the tule lands. 

At the foot of this bluff so thick was the growth of 
tule, and so compactly had the fallen tules matted, that 
a sort of natural dam was formed, and the river, meeting 
this obstruction, backed up its waters into a shallow lake 
covering perhaps three or four hundred acres. 

It was from stands in the tules on the border of this 
lake that our shooting w^as done. 

On the November day in question six guns were shoot- 
ing, and six fine bags were hung on the north wall of the 
cabin before noon. The birds were mainly widgeon, with 
a sprinkling of teal, mallards, and sprigs. 

While we were eating our noonday meal, a heavy wind 
began to blow — a wind which we call here the ''Santa 
Ana,'^ but which should be called the ''Cajon," for it 



64 WrLDFOWLING TALES 

roars down the pass of that name, and generally blows 
for three days, and with high velocity. 

The birds had been pretty well driven out of the marsh 
by the morning's shooting, and had gone to raft at sea; 
where ordinarily the bulk of them would have remained 
until evening, riding in immense bands, acres in extent, 
about a mile beyond the line of breakers. 

But when the Santa Ana started to blow, flocks of 
ducks began pitching into the marsh and whirring down 
to the lake again in clouds and battalions. 

The sight of the returning birds, and the howl of the 
wind, increasing every moment, was a big temptation to 
stay another night, and take the next morning's shoot. 
It was a. temptation that Kenneth and I did not try to 
resist; we sent our morning's bag back to town with the 
rest of the boys who were returning, and we decided to 
remain over. 

That afternoon we amused ourselves for awhile watch- 
ing the incoming birds, and spying out with field-glasses 
the masses of birds banked in the lee of the sheltering 
tules. 

Getting Ready for Sport. 

About an hour before sunset we loaded every decoy we 
could find into a light skiff, or 'Hule splitter," as that 
type of boat is called, and wading along the edge of the 
lake, we pushed the skiff to a point well up towards the 
head of the lake, where the river divided into several 
shallow channels. 



DUCK SHOOTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 65 

Here we constructed of dead cockle-burrs an incon- 
spicuous blind, circular in form, and left in it two wooden 
shell boxes for seats. 

The decoys, a hundred or more, we set in two stools, 
hour-glass fashion, the smaller stool heading up wind 
from the blind. 

Then we went back to the cabin, had supper, a night 
cap or two, and turned into the bunks, the wind howling 
like a lot of demons loosed from the pit, and making the 
cabin to rock and groan like a labouring ship. 

It seemed to me I had just gone to sleep, when Samow, 
our Alsatian keeper, was shaking me by the shoulder 
and calling ''4 o 'clock !^^ 

After a hot breakfast, Kenneth and I bundled into 
heavy sweaters and shooting jackets, jammed our caps 
down tight, and carr^dng our guns and a plentiful supply 
of shells, with the howling wind at our backs, stumbled 
along in the darkness to our blind prepared the evening 
before. As we labored along the treacherous edge of 
the lake, stumbling now and then over unseen roots, we 
put up great bands of ducks, which were caught up and 
whirled off in the darkness by the fierce wind, their pro- 
testing quacks and calls drowned by the blast. 

We reached the blind shortly before dawn, and seating 
ourselves on the wooden shell boxes, we opened the shell 
cases, to have our ammunition supply with easy reach. 
Kenneth was shooting an L. C. Smith twelve, and I a 
Parker twelve. 

The east was flushed with crimson — an angry red, due 



66 WILDFOWLING TALES 

to the dust raised by the Santa Ana. Great banks of 
tules, standing black against the east, were whipped al- 
most level by the screaming v/ind. We were cold, even 
in our heavy sweaters and jackets. 

Bands of birds were constantly flashing over us, blown 
like down before the wind, or else with laboring pinions 
and making poor headway, bravely trying to breast it. 

The Shooting Begins. 

Kenneth, rubbing his hands to keep warm, leaned over 
and howled in my ear : ' ' Let 's take only ' bull ' Avidgeon. ' ' 
I nodded ''All right." It was light enough to see the 
colors on the birds — to distinguish the different species. 
It was time to shoot. Heading towards us, upwind, and 
moving slowly, was a band of perhaps fifty widgeon, 
necks outstretched, pinions beating rhythmically, the 
white sploches on the wings of the drakes plainly dis- 
cemable in the dawning light. Kenneth and I half rose. 
Two sharp cracks — the bark of 31/2 drams of Schultze — 
followed by two more, and four birds crumpled, were 
caught by the wind, and landed in the marsh grass 20 
yards back of the spot where they had met the charge of 
shot. 

The four reports caused great bands of widgeon and 
other fowl to rise from the marsh down wind from us, 
and these birds began beating up the wind and passed in 
a steady stream over us, not more than 30 yards high. 

For awhile the shooting was as fast as the two of us 
could load and fire, and with a proper allowance for the 



DUCK SHOOTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 67 

drift of the shot, it was perhaps the easiest and prettiest 
sport we had ever enjoyed. 

The birds were not all widgeon. There were many 
swirling flocks of teal, strings of mallard and pintail, 
and the ever-present shoveller. But we passed them all 
up for the VA^idgeon, and on these tried only for the 
drakes — ''bulls," we called them then. 

Steadily the wind hummed and roared over the marsh, 
and steadily the layers of shells in our cases grew lower. 
Still the wonderful flight continued — the birds were un- 
willing to beat to sea, which was then too rough for them 
to raft on. 

We kept careful count of the fallen birds. A little 
before 9 o'clock Kenneth called to me: "I have fifty-six 
down. Let's stop." I had counted fifty-one to my gun. 
We drew the charges from our guns, left them in the 
blind, and went out to gather the birds. 

Half an hour later, when we had scoured the marsh 
grass in a wide circle about the blind, we had piled up 
our morning's bag, and started to string them on the 
straps. There were 104 widgeon, and all "bulls" save 
three ! 

Sarnow had been watching our shooting through the 
glasses from the shelter of an old shed on the bluff, and 
seeing us gathering in the birds he came out to the blind 
and slung one heavy strap-full across his shoulder. The 
other strap Kenneth and I slung on a willow sapling, 
and so the three of us trudged it back to the cabin, turn- 



68 WILDFOWLING TALES 

ing our heads sidewise to breathe, for the gale drove the 
breath back in our teeth when we faced it. 

When we had rested a bit and loaded the birds in the 
wagon for the drive back to Santa Ana, we walked to 
the edge of the bluff and swept the lake and marshes 
with the glasses. There were apparently more birds than 
ever; great banks of fowl formed dark splotches in the 
lee of every wall of tule and sheltering bank, while in the 
air, on a level with us as we stood on the bluff, great 
flocks were still battling with the "Santa Ana." 

Modem California Duck Shooting. 

On the evening of October 15, 1919, thirteen of us were 
gathered in the club house of the Willow Gun Club, with 
grounds twenty-seven miles south of Los Angeles. 

The preserve consists of sugar-beet fields, which are 
surrounded by dykes, and divided by cross-dykes, much 
like a checker-board. These fields are flooded after the 
crop is gathered in September, and for some unknown 
reason the wild ducks seem partial to them, and flock 
there in large numbers. 

The grounds are bounded on the west by the San Ga- 
briel River, along the banks of which there is a heavy 
growth of willow. A mile to the east is a much travelled 
highway — an automobile boulevard along which motor 
cars are constantly passing, A mile away in another 
direction is a large beet-sugar factory. 



DUCK SHOOTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 69 

But the proximity of all this acti^dty does not seem to 
affect the shooting in any great degree, although it cer- 
tainly robs the sport of — to me — one of its chief charms, 
and that is an unbroken stretch of marsh or lake with 
the works of man gloriously missing from the scene ! 

The blinds are wooden sinkboxes sunk flush with the 
top of the dykes, and around which rag weeds are 
planted. 

Adjoining the Willow Club grounds on the east and 
south are two other gun clubs, with preserves formed of 
artificially overflowed lands. 

When we started for the blinds on the morning of the 
opening of the season, October 16, 1919, ducks were con- 
stantly springing from the margins of the ponds as we 
passed on our way to the pits. 

It was slippery work crossing along the dykes in the 
darkness, but Fred G. and I finally reached our sinkbox 
a half hour before legal shooting time. 

Having laid out a supply of shells on the shelf of the 
sinkbox, we sat there with pipes aglow, watching the 
ducks swishing over our heads, and listening to the calls 
of the birds disturbed in distant ponds by the other 
shooters taking their positions. 

The little sixteen gauge Parkers were loaded with No. 
7, as, watch in hand, we waited for the legal half hour 
before sunrise. 



70 WILDFOWLING TALES 

The Sport Begins. 

Some impatient gumier on the Shotover Club south of 
us anticipated the time by three minutes, and his shot 
was echoed and answered by a fusillade all over the 
marsh. It sounded like a sharp skirmish. The air was 
full of birds, mainly sprig, although there were many 
teal also. 

The birds were bewildered, for this was the opening 
shoot, and many of them were hearing gunfire for the 
first time. 

The shooting was ridiculously easy for the first hour, 
and only a dub would have missed taking toll for the 
hundreds of sprig and teal that were almost constantly 
passing over the blinds. 

After the first hour the shooting quieted down, and 
most of the birds had left the marsh, driven off by the 
terrific bombardment. 

The early morning fog had vanished, and the sun was 
shining hot and strong. Not a breath of wind was stir- 
ring. Not a bird in sight. 

Fred and I waded out in the shallow ponds and 
gathered our birds. We brought back to the blind thirty- 
two, and piled them in the shade of some tall cockle- 
burrs. 

Suddenly out of the blues came the well-known 
"scaipe! scaipe!^' and two jacksnipe came corkscrewing 
overhead. Their calls were their undoing, for we were 
ready for them, and two little ''spats" showed where 



DUCK SHOOTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 7 1 

they had struck the water in a grassy shallow of the 
pond. 

Presently over the fringe of willows to the south we 
marked a dark line, quickly growing larger. The sprigs 
were coming back for a drink. Guns began cracking all 
over the marsh. 

It was not such easy shooting now, nor so fast and 
furious as the first hour. But all the more enjoyable for 
that. At intervals pairs and singles and small flocks 
flew by in range, and it was not long before Fred and I 
had killed the eighteen birds that rounded out our legal 
limit of fifty for the two guns. 

It was hot work tramping back to the club house with 
the heavy birds. It was certainly not duck weather. 

Several of the shooters were already in, and one by 
one the others came trailing up to the club house. 

Almost everyone had "the limit," and 80 per cent of 
the birds were sprig — as fat as butter, and the drakes 
indistinguishable from the ducks, for they were still in 
summer plumage. 

An hour later we were in Los Angeles, and the "open- 
ing shoot" was a memory. 



DUCKING AT MOON LAKE, LOUISIANA 



HARRISON MINGE 



AS social woman displays her jewels and arranges 
the spangles on her gown, likemse is the State of 
Louisiana bedecked with fresh-water lakes. Of 
these, perhaps the purest crystal in a liquid broach, not 
far from the Arkansas line, is Moon Lake, sportsman's 
mecca of the northern tier of parishes. 

The evening of January 20th was warm in temperature 
and lugubrious in aspect. A warm rain pattered a mo- 
notonous dirge upon the cabin shingles at Camp Zephyr, 
corroding the gayety of four sportsmen who had just 
come in from Moon Lake. There were many indications, 
however, that before many hours there would be a great 
change in the weather. 

The next morning a cold wave was closing in upon 
the South. The huge gray-black cloudbank in the north 
gradually began to break up, and sections, deploying like 
icebergs from a glacier, floated across the sky. 

Occasional snow flakes, winnowed from the slowly fall- 
ing sleet, fluttered and swirled lil^e tiny dispatches in the 
wake of breeze couriers of the retreating warm atmos- 
phere, as the scouts of the Storm King crept forward in 
the shape of short icy blasts, which growing stronger 

72 



DUCKING AT MOON LAKE 73 

and bolder, assailed the thermometer and sent the mer- 
cury tumbling. 

Presently a rapidly reinforced skirmish line of riotous 
gusts charged through the forest, driving before them a 
rout of leaves and twigs and tufts of Spanish moss torn 
from the gray-bearded live-oak trees, and discharging 
intermittent volleys of sleet against the camp cabin win- 
dow panes, with the rattle and roll of musketry. 

Army of Waterfowl Appear. 

Suddenly in the somber premature twilight, the 
anxiously awaited allies of the cold wave appeared. Out- 
lined against the low dark scudding clouds, their white 
breasts flashing like gaudy uniforms, flock after flock of 
ducks and geese advanced in line and in echelon, or in 
great V's and spreading columns, and when over the 
broad sweep of the lake, wheeled and circled and bunched 
en masse, as they breasted the currents of the gale in 
graceful evolutions. 

Eagerly the hunters watched the feathered army re- 
connoiter the environs of Moon Lake. A pang of acute 
regret pierced the heart and a groan of disappointment 
escaped, when the vanguard, main body and reserves of 
the winged host, successively melted from sight beyond 
the murky southern horizon ; to be quickly dispelled and 
succeeded by a wave of buoyant delight and a burst of 
enthusiastic cheers, when the rear guard, company by 
company, swept into view, and with cupped wings 



74 WILDFOWLING TALES 

dropped from the clouds and pitched behind the cypress 
brakes — to bivouac amidst the cockleburs and marsh 
grass in the various arms and pockets of the lake. 

By degrees the mist, ravelled from the skirts of the 
wind-whipped clouds, turned into fine ice needles; and 
the edges of each blast, as though Avhetted and sharp- 
ened upon some frigid Aeolian hone, grew keen and 
penetrating as a new-ground blade. 

In the morning our boat reached the blind just as day 
was breaking — cold and gray. The Major turned his 
cheek to accurately gauge the wind which began to in- 
crease as the sun rose, then directed Lem to row to a 
position east of the blind. 

''Wind's right from the north," he said. "Let's put 
out our decoys a little to wdndward of the blind, and 
string them out to the east — giving them plenty of 
elbow room because it's going to be rough." 

He motioned to Lem to anchor when the position se- 
lected was reached. 

"Ducks always decoy against the wind," continued 
the Major, "which is a pointer those flyin' fellows appear 
to overlook a lot of times when they try to light with 
their aeroplanes. Today the ducks will skirt the shore 
line behind us and fetch up in the eye of the wind, with 
the dull sky for a good background." 



DUCKING AT MOON LAKE 75 

Pintails Inspect Decoys. 

While the decoys were being set out, a flock of pintails 
swooped down silently, rose suddenly with astonished 
quacks and frenzied flapping of wings when they spied 
the figures in the boat, then circled round and round, eye- 
ing with unsated curiosity the launching of the decoys, 
and commenting among themselves upon the remarkable 
temerity of their tame brethren. 

The live decoys disported as merrily as a child in it's 
bath ; diving, fluttering water over their backs and wings, 
then treading water and flapping themselves dr^^ again. 
The hens preened their feathers vigorously, apparently 
wishing to dress their prettiest to insure the attention of 
the wild drake and the envy of the ladies of his court. 

The old drake leader of the decoys swept the horizon 
with his eye and uttered the low pre-e-1, pre-e-1, pre-e-1 
of warning. 

Cutting our eyes around through the dead willows 
fringing the blind, we caught sight of a flock of mallards 
skimming along the shore just above the timber line. 

Suddenly the old duck's siren q-u-a-c-k, q-u-a-c-k, 
quack, quack, quack, followed by the full cry of the de- 
coy flock, turned the mallards toward the blind. 

Crouched in breathless suspense, the palpitations of 
the heart clearly audible, we watched the large flock of 
mallards approach to about two hundred yards, at which 
radius they commenced to circle the decoys, which en- 
gaged them in animated conversation. 



76 WILDFOWLING TALES 

Round and round they circled until the prudent leader 
of the decoj^s, tiring of useless gabble, silenced his flock 
with a disgusted quack. The old fraud refused to en- 
gage in further parley unless the mid visitors accepted 
his assurances and came down for a sociable gossip. 

Ducks Decoy Well. 

The mallards, failing to draw him out any more, swept 
down with the wind, flashed by the blind in a long sweep- 
ing curve, and heading up into the wind again, cupped 
their wings and glided slowly up to the decoys, present- 
ing an easy target. 

As the day progressed, g-uns began to pop and rumble 
in the arms and pockets, and the ducks, kept constantly 
on the wing, fell easy prey to the guns and decoys in the 
open water. Our position proved a veritable Mecca for 
feathered pilgrims and various kinds of wild ducks be- 
came the transient guests of the decoy bathing party, 
giving full scope to the old drake's knowledge of the 
peculiarities of species, and a rich field for his talents in 
playing upon the weaknesses of each. 

Garrulous mallards circled and chattered and sailed 
leisurely into the decoys ; clumsy pintails, like the credu- 
lous crowd at a circus, rushed pell-mell into the decoy 
side show; swift-winged teal swept over the decoys with 
the speed of a rocket, swung around in deep loops expos- 
ing fascinating glimpses of white breasts, and boldly 
approached with headlong vehemence ; plump little blue- 



DUCKING AT MOON LAKE 'J^ 

bills pirouetted gayly to their fate; while small flocks 
of redheads occasionally flew within range, but usually 
— with suspicions developed by the predatory tutelage of 
the canvasback buccaneers — glided cautiously down to the 
water and lit beyond gunshot of the blind. 

By one o'clock, having bagged the limit, we sig-naled 
Lem, "took up," and returned to camp. In response to 
Lem's halloo, a little colored boy with eyes as big as 
saucers, met us at the landing with a buckboard, and the 
old darky's embellished and illustrated description of 
the shoot was music as sweet to the ears of the boy as 
the wind of horn to hound. 

As we drove to the cabin the Major asked : 

''Lem, have you got room for one of Dinah's dinners 
of duck and turnip, snowy rice and rich brown gravy, 
crusty buttered combread and cold buttermilk?" 

"Look'y here, Boss! Please, sir, doan talk so loud! 
Ef dat mule hears you, he'll run away wid us shore!" 




LAKE KOSHKONONG— HISTORICAL AND 
SPORTING 



WILLIAM C. HAZELTON 



KOSHKONONG! World famous lake ! Celebrated 
even in a state where there are many beautiful 
lakes, great and small. Truly the greatest lake 
for waterfowl in all Wisconsin, and possessing wondrous 
natural beauty, admired not only by the hunter, but by 
all who carry the love of nature in their hearts. No 
one can view its waters without being thrilled. 

What glorious flights of noble white-backs have swept 
down from the far north on their migrations to And here 
a haven of rest and food. Redheads, too, and all the 
countless hosts of migratory waterfowl knew it from a 
time before a white man ever gazed upon its waters. 

The Indians made annual pilgrimages to hunt and 
fish here, and the squaws gathered wild rice, a valuable 
article of food with them, and cultivated fields of Indian 
corn on its shores. 

The name Koshkonong is Winnebago, and means ''lake 
we live on. ' ' Historical as well as archaeological evidence 
proves Koshkonong to have been a favorite home of 
the aborigines. In 1828 an Indian village of 1200 souls 
was yet upon its banks. They were Pottowatamies, and 

78 



LAKE KOSHKONONG 79 

the ruling chief was White Crow. They were living in 
lodges covered with white cedar bark, not wig'wams, but 
huts. Black Hawk passed near Koshkonong several 
times on his raids, and was finally defeated by U. S. 
troops on the Mississippi Eiver above Rock Island. 

Size and Location of Lake. 

Koshlvonong is nine niiles long and three miles wide. 
Innumerable bays stud its shores, and the shore line is 
from 22 to 24 miles. The bed is an expanse of Rock 
River, with broad, shallow bays which are bordered with 
considerable areas of swamp land. The surrounding 
higher lands consists of great rolling, but irregular 
morainic knolls, which in places approach the lake shore 
without a bordering strip of marsh land. The lake lies 
in Jefferson, Dane and Rock Counties, Wisconsin. The 
depth of the water is from 4 to 9 feet. It is a large open 
lake with no islands. The diving ducks can feed any- 
where out in the lake, safe from molestation, as it is 
illegal to shoot in open waters in Wisconsin. Birds 
will not remain long where shot at on the open water. 
This results in thousands of ducks arriving early in the 
season, later being joined by others, until vast numbers 
are located permanently over the large celery beds. 
There they remain until driven away by ice closing the 
lake. The mallards and shoal-water ducks bed in the 
open lake, visiting the adjoining marshes to feed at 
night. 



8o WrLDFOWLING TAI.ES 

Wlien Dr. Lapliam visited the lake in 1850 he wrote : — 
*'The water is from 4 to 12 feet deep. At the time of 
our visit in July, wild rice was growing abundantly over 
almost its entire surface, giving it more the appearance 
of a meadow than a lake." Today the wild rice is con- 
fined to the shallowest parts of the bays. 

Early History of Koshkonong. 

The first man to view Lake Koshkonong was a French 
explorer, and he was also probably a fur trader. 

In January, 1778, Charles Gautier de Verville made a 
journey from Le Baye (Green Bay) to the River la Roche 
(Rock River) and finding no Indians at home he was 
forced to seek them at Prairie du Chien. He writes in 
his diary: "I fell upon a great lake on River la Roche 
(Koshkonong) where there had been two villages of 
Winnebagoes. But they had gone to Prairie du Chien 
for the winter, where there was a larger settlement." 

In 1828 Satterlee Clark arrived at the lake in company 
with Major Forsyth and Captain Kinzie, who was the 
first white child born in Chicago. They came by way of 
Green Bay, by skiff up the Fox to Lake Winnebago, 
across to Fond du Lac, overland to the Rock at Waupun 
and down the river to the lake. 

Satterlee Clark again visited the lake in 1830. He 
wrote: 

'*0n the night of September 2, 1830, I slept in an In- 
dian lodge on the east bank of Rock River where Horicon 



LAKE KOSHKONONG 8l 

now stands. I was on my way with White Ox to an In- 
dian settlement at the head of Lake Koshkonong. I was 
but 14 years of age. ' ' 

Mrs. Kinzie Visits Lake. 

On her return to Fort Winnebago from Chicago in the 
spring of 1831, Mrs. Kinzie speaks of her arrival at Man- 
Eater's village on Lake Koshkonong as follows: 

''This day we were journeying in hopes to reach, at an 
early hour, that broad expanse of the Rock River which 
here forms the Koshkonong. The wooded banks of the 
Koshkonong were never welcomed with greater delight 
than by us. We rode through the beautiful oak openings 
to Man-Eater's village, a collection of neat bark wig- 
wams, with extensive fields on each side of corn, beans 
and squashes. In front was the broad blue lake. Near 
the village and stretching for away to the north the lake 
was bordered by fine lofty trees. 

"We received a visit from White Crow, Last Feather, 
Yellow Thunder, the Little Priest, and several other of 
the Rock River Indians. White Crow was the Indian 
who afterwards distinguished himself as the friend of 
the whites during the Sauk War. ' ' 

Charles Thiebeau was a fur buyer for Solomon Juneau 
in the early 30 's. He had two squaw wives and grown 
up children. More than one visit was made to Thiebeau 
at Koshkonong by the founder of Milwaukee. Thiebeau 
disappeared in 1838. Accounts differ as to the manner 
of his death. 



82 WILDFOWLING TALES 

The nearest town of size to Koshkonong is Edgerton, 
four miles from the lake. The village of Newville is 
located on Rock River, some little distance down from 
where it leaves the lake. Rock River is one of the most 
picturesque streams in the United States. 

Ira Bingham is the oldest and most noted hunter of 
the Koshkonong region. He is a small, wiry man of great 
vitality. Many of his contemporaries have passed on 
long since. You fully realize that he is a marksman 
and man of determination. He attended many large 
live bird tournaments in the old days, but does not care 
for target shooting. Ezra, better known as Ed, is a 
younger brother of Ira. He is well known as a hunter 
and crack shot. The Bingham farm of several hundred 
acres is located on Bingham's point, which juts out 
into Lake Koshkonong. It is a valuable and up-to-date 
farm with plenty of stock thereon. There is an exten- 
sive marsh on one side. 

The following interesting data was told me by Ira 
Bingham on a visit to Koshkonong: 

The Old Timer's Story. 

'*I am 83 years old. I came here in 1846. In 1858 I 
began to shoot for the market. I sold 2300 ducks to one 
man in Janesville from September 15th to November 1st 
of that year. I used a muzzle loading gun at that time. 
In 1872 I furnished the Shemian House, Chicago, with 
several hundred canvasbacks at 50 cents each. I also 
sold many thousand birds to the Hyatt House, Chicago, 
then one of the leading hostelries. 



LAKE KOSHKONONG 83 

**I was the first man to use a scull on Lake Kosh- 
konong. I was also the first man to vote against the use 
of a scull when a bill came up to prohibit its use, as I 
saw it was ruining the shooting. 

''Following the Civil War Phil Sheridan came here 
often for the shooting. I have sculled him many times 
up to flocks of canvasbacks, also shot from the blind with 
him. He was not a very good marksman. 

"In the early days we did not know the birds we killed 
at Koshkonong were true canvasbacks, and we called 
them little and big redheads. Later we discovered the 
difference. Eastern hunters told us that there were no 
canvasbacks in the west. 

''During my career as a hunter I have had some amus- 
ing experiences with these who came to shoot at Kosh- 
konong. 

"Years ago two leading lights of the legal fraternity, 
both afterwards prominent on the bench, came annually 
here as companions for a duck hunt. 

"As neither were expert marksmen, they usually 
hunted with a guide. On one occasion it fell to me to 
take Judge Conger out for a shoot. 

"About two miles down the lake thousands of mallards 
were feeding in the marsh. We rowed down against a 
strong wind, and getting back in the flags on the marsh 
out of the wind somewhat, set out our decoys in a little 
opening. 

"We had routed out many big flocks of mallards on 



84 WILDFOWLING TALES 

our arrival, which left for the open waters of the lake. 
As it was very rough on the lake, I knew they would soon 
return to more sheltered spots. 

Days of the Old Muzzle Loader. 

'^This was in the days of the old muzzle loader and 
ammunition was not always plentiful. We only had about 
two pounds of shot between us, and it would not take 
my companion long to shoot away at least half of it, with 
prospects of small return, as I well knew from observing 
his marksmanship on previous occasions. I wanted to 
see him get some birds and had a plan in mind. 

"So I said, 'Conger, you lie down in one end of the 
boat where you will be more comfortable, and let me do 
the shooting.' He was agreeable. Soon a big flock of 
mallards swung in against the wind over the decoys. I 
killed two with the first barrel- and one with the second. 

"I made every shot count and at the end of an hour 
we had twenty-five or thirty fine mallards. We pulled 
up our decoys. I tied the ducks into two equal bunches. 
We hoisted a little sail I had in the boat and steered for 
Bingham's Point. 

''With the gale blowing it did not take -long to reach 
there. Judge Williams was at the landing to meet us 
and opened his eyes when he saw the two bunches of 
ducks we had. I pulled the boat up and laid the heav>^ 
bunches of mallards on the shore. 

" 'Conger, how many of these ducks did you kill?' 



LAKE KOSHKONONG 85 

asked Judge Williams. ^I killed my share,' replied 
Judge Conger. 

'' 'Honest, now. Conger, how many of them did you 
kill?' persisted Judge Williams. 

'' *I tell you I killed my share,' stoutly asserted Judge 
Conger, and that is all he would say. 

"Judge Williams' suspicions had a good foundation, 
for Judge Conger had not killed a single bird. Had he 
admitted it, however, he would have never heard the 
last of it. I remained silent." 

As an evidence of the vast number of waterfowl at 
Koshkonong in the old days, the veteran sportsman, C. 
L. Valentine of Janesville, told me: "I have shot at 
Koshkonong for more than fifty years. On the day on 
which the steamer Chicora mysteriously disappeared on 
Lake Michigan, never to be heard from, I bagged 78 red- 
heads at Koshkonong, shooting from a point, and without 
the use of decoys." 

Last Winnebago Camp. 

It is evident that the red men once enjoyed the charm- 
ing scenery of Koshkonong as thousands of whites have 
since. The following is by Miss Hannah L. Skavlem of 
Janesville, whose family spends much time at the lake 
each season and whose father has closely investigated all 
early history as well as all mounds, burial places and 
Lidian relics, also the aquatic plants and flora of the 
lake and adjoining country. 



86 WILDFOWLING TALES 

''In one of the lonesomest, most secluded spots on the 
northwestern shore of the lake in the midst of a wilder- 
ness of swampy wood, close beside the banks of Kosh- 
konong creek, stands all that remains of Lake Koshko- 
nong's last Indian village. It is as if nature herself 
would keep sacred this last vestige of a bygone race — 
it is so completely hidden under a cenotaph of green. 
Through the dense foliage the stinlight falls in a glim- 
mering golden shower that illuminates but scarcely dis- 
pells the melancholy gloom of the interior, which con- 
tains the denuded frames of a few scattered wigwams 
and a debris of whitening bones and mouldering tatters 
of fur, rush mats and pieces of clothing. 

Personnel and Peculiarities. 

"Until within the last few years a small band of In- 
dians (Winnebago) from the northern part of the state 
have wintered here, but in the spring of 1895, they broke 
up camp for the last time and Koshkonong knows them 
no more. Their camp or village numbered five lodges 
and their band was composed of the members of three 
separate families. These were Charlie Decorah and his 
squaw — Charlie was about 50 years old and the 'medi- 
cine man' — Moses Decorah, squaw, and three papooses; 
Henry Decorah and squaw. Henry was the learned man 
of the party, and could read and write English fairly 
well; Charlie Green and squaw, and War Club, squaw, 
and one papoose. 



LAKE KOSHKONONG 87 

"Old Grandma Decorali, mother of Charlie, Moses 
and Henry Decorah, appeared to be at least 100 years 
old and was so crippled and bent that she could not walk. 
She seemed to be well cared for by her sons. Charlie 
Green's mother was also a very old squaw but remark- 
ably smart and active. With old mother Green lived her 
daughter, a comely dame apparently some years past the 
meridian of life. She was the one and only bachelor maid 
in the community. 

''Their domestic relations were of a superior quality 
inasmuch as they lived very peacefully together. Oc- 
casionally to vary the monotony of the connubial felicity 
or perhaps in imitation of the ways of their white 
brothers, there would be (without recourse to the law, 
however) an amicable exchanging of wives. They ap- 
peared to be honest Indians. 

Sang the Death Song. 

"The last Indian burial was in the sprmg of 1894, 
when the little son of Moses Decorah died. For several 
nights before and after the death of the child, the old 
trees that line the banks of Koshkonong creek and stand 
sentinel over the abandoned village echoed the death song 
of perhaps the last Indian who will ever take his de- 
parture to the happy hunting grounds in truly aboriginal 
style. For a burial casket they cut in two one of their 
canoes in which little Mose Decorah now sleeps in the 
Sumner cemetery." 



RANDOM NOTES ON DUCK SHOOTING 



PAUL E. PAGE 



FORTUNATE in an acquaintance numbering a great 
many men who are votaries of the sport of wild- 
fowling, I can count on the fingers of one hand those 
who are proficient in the art of calling ducks. The ordi- 
nary duck call, of whatever make or pattern — and there 
are many — is usually worse than useless as it comes from 
the hands of the manufacturer. To be a really good call 
it needs to be practically remade by an expert — the 
wooden cylinder thinned down, the reed, too, worked on 
and adjusted until the call is capable of delivering the 
proper tones — and then it is only successful in the hands 
of the very few. How often have I heard some duck- 
shooter, with mistaken optimism, dolefully "quacking" 
away on his call, and scaring every duck within hearing ! 
In my thirty-three years of duck-shooting I have never 
been able to learn to use what I may desigiiate as the 
''quack" call — the typical call of the female, mallard, and 
the slightly louder call of the shoveller. Certain ducks 
I can call successfully, namely, the canvasback and red- 
head and the widgeon. An old market shooter, Charley 
Vincent, gave m^e the secret of calling cans and redheads, 
and I have never known it to fail. It consists simply in 

88 



RANDOM NOTES ON DUCK SHOOTING 89 

making a ''thumping'" noise, at very short and regular 
intervals. And this may be done with the heel of a rub- 
ber boot on the sides of a wooden boat, or on the sides of 
a wooden sinkbox, etc. Thus, tump ! tump ! tump ! tump ! 
tump! tump! continued at intervals of perhaps three to 
the second. I have tried this call hundreds of times, and 
never have I found it fail to work on even good-sized 
bands of cans or redheads, and for single birds it is very 
good medicine ! Bluebills sometimes respond to it. With 
this call I have often turned single canvasback, even when 
shooting without decoys. 

For imitating the peculiar flute-like whistle of the 
widgeon (baldpate) I have had great success by using a 
small nickel whistle, named the "Echo" whistle. The 
small cork ball should first be removed from the barrel, 
and with a little practice the mellow and penetrating call 
of the widgeon can be imitated most successfully — and 
few ducks respond more eagerly to a proper call than 
do the American widgeon (Anas Americana). 

I have known only one man who could successfully call 
wild geese, and he imitated their clarion notes without 
the use of any made ''call." 

Whether any call could be devised or any man become 
so proficient as to imitate the wonderful music of the 
sandhill crane I very much doubt. The soul-stirring 
notes of the sandhill cranes, filtering down from the tre- 
mendous height at which these birds fly, heard on a frosty, 
star-strewn November night, is never to be forgotten. 



90 WILDFOWLING TALES 

Canvasback Found in "Egypt. 

In all works on ornithology that I have read, and in all 
books on American game birds, and particularly Ameri- 
can waterfowl, I have seen it stated that the canvasback 
duck is strictly indigenous to the North American con- 
tinent and is not found elsewhere in the world, except in 
foreign zoological parks, where specimens have been sent 
from this country. The redhead duck is found in Europe, 
where it is called pochard. A variety of the widgeon, 
too, inhabits Europe (Mareca Penelope), differing slight- 
ly from its American cousin (Anas Americana). The 
mallard and teal are found all over the temperate zones 
of the globe. But for years I was firmly of the belief 
that the canvasback was wholly our own, a typical Ameri- 
can bird, and fitted almost to take its place beside the 
great American eagle. However, in the Autumn of 1909 
I was for a short time in Cairo, Eg\"pt. I met in the bar 
of Shepheard's Hotel, an elderly gentleman, an Ameri- 
can, to whom I remarked, during the course of a conver- 
sation, upon the immense number of ducks and geese 
that I had seen a few days previously along the shores 
of L'Eau Douce, on my way by train from Port Said to 
Cairo. 

This led to this gentleman (whose name I cannot re- 
call) telling me quite a bit about the wonderful duck 
shooting to be had in Egypt. I learned that he was even 
then outfitting for a duck shooting trip to some lakes in 



RANDOM NOTES ON DUCK SHOOTING 9 1 

the interior and that he looked forward to some wonder- 
ful canvasback shooting. 

''Surely, sir," said I, "you must mean redheads. 
There are no canvasbacks on this side?" And I quoted 
some of the books I had read. 

"I am sorry to disagree with your authorities," he 
replied, "but I must maintain that there are canvasbacks 
in Egypt — any number of them. I have shot canvasback 
ducks along the Chesapeake and on the Susquehanna 
marshes, and I know a canvasback duck when I see one. 
And a redhead, too, for that matter." 

So there you are ! 

Two Varieties of Canvasback. 

Speaking of canvasback, I have never enjoyed the won- 
derful canvasback shooting that is to be found in certain 
favored locations near San Francisco Bay and the Suisin 
Marshes — the famous Tubb's Island Club, for instance. 
But one evening, a few seasons ago, I was talking to 
"Doc" Wilson at Newport Bay in southern California. 
Our subject was duck shooting, for we were going up the 
bay (where Wilson had some floating blinds), to try for 
a few canvasback on the morrow. W^ilson is a member 
of the Tubb 's Island Club and was telling me of the phe- 
nomenal canvasback shooting that that club afforded. 

"Do you know," said he, "that there are two varieties 
of canvasback — or at least a sub-species?" 



92 WILDFOWLING TALES 

Upon my replying in the negative, he continued: 
''Well, there are, and it is a fact well known among 
the Tubb's Island gunners. The first canvasbacks usu- 
ally arrive in San Francisco Bay the latter part of Octo- 
ber or the first of November. They are in plumage then 
and the heads of the drakes are the well-known chestnut 
color, the white markings on their backs, and the white 
plumage of the under parts bright and speckless. Then, 
along about the early or middle part of December, the 
sub-species (if so I may call them) arrive. They are 
much larger and heavier birds, and the heads of the 
drakes have a decidedly rusty appearance, and the white 
under parts of the drakes are tinged with grayish, rusty 
streaks. It is quite a distinct type of canvasback." 
So there you are again! 

Ducks Far From Habitat. 

Perhaps most wildfowlers are aware of the fact that 
"stragglers" — and by that I mean ducks far away from 
their usual habitat — are occasionally found in the day's 
bag. I once killed a European widgeon (Mareca Pene- 
lope) among a bag of other widgeon bagged at the Cerri- 
tos Gun Club. It was a male, in full winter plumage. I 
sent a note of the fact to a sportsman's journal at the 
time, and the editor noted the fact that it was the fourth 
instance that had been called to his attention from differ- 
ent American points. Bluewing teal are not infrequently 
killed in California. As to whether our common cinna- 



RANDOM NOTES ON DUCK SHOOTING 



93 



mon teal is found in any numbers in the eastern states, I 
do not know. I have never seen a "black duck" (Anas 
Obscura) in California, nor have I ever heard of one be- 
ing killed. I have, on the other hand, on three different 
occasions, seen in southern California good-sized flocks 
of the roseate spoonbill of Florida. 

A rare visitor here from Mexico is the fulvous-bellied 
tree duck, which flies with the slow wing-beat of a goose. 
This duck and the cinnamon teal make southern, or at 
least middle, California about the northern limit of their 
annual migration, so that these birds arrive here just 
about the closing time of our open season, and depart for 
the south about the time our open season commences. 




THE QUEST OF THE MALLARD 



EDWARD C. WARNER 



MALLARD shooting doAvn in the Illinois river 
bottoms is becoming more and more restricted 
to the preser\^es, where the birds are fed thou- 
sands of bushels of corn every season, and where the 
rules do not permit of the ducks being "burned out" by 
shooting before sunrise and after dark. 

The competition among the throng of hunters outside 
the club boundaries is so keen that the acquisition of a 
good bag goes only to the man who is ever on the alert 
and who is not afraid of any hardship. It is one thing 
to arise betimes, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and be 
piloted to a feeding pen which has been reserved for 
you and there pick off Mr. Greenliead as he comes for 
the corn which he knows awaits him; it is quite another 
to get up at 3 :30, gulp down a cup of hot coffee, and 
row miles in the raw November air to some blind which, 
more than likely, is the objective of a half-dozen other 
hunters. 

It was my good fortune to enjoy a day's shoot in the 
Illinois river country in November, 1919, which con- 
tained all the thrills which a hunter could ask for. With 

my long-time friend, Charley F , I had gone to a 

camp in one of the little river towns for a week's vaca- 

94 



QUEST OF THE MALLAED 95 

tion. There were plenty of ducks in the country, but 
the "bluebird weather" was not favorable and they 
refused to ''work/' Each day we looked eagerly for 
the weather forecast in the paper from Chicago, but 
were regularly disappointed by the prediction of "not 
much change in temperature." Day after day we scouted 
about the country, returning every night with but a duck 
or two to reward our efforts. From sunrise until dark 
we tramped through the marshes or waited patiently in 
a blind, only to see flock after flock of mallards pass 
over us at a lofty height in their journeys between the 
preserves and the big lakes. 

We Make a Discovery. 

We had about given up hope of any shooting, and 
were bemoaning our luck in picking the wrong week for 
our vacation. And then, all of a sudden, things began 
to happen. We had made a blind near a patch of open 
water in some dead timber, and had been smoking and 
snoozing the time away since early morning without get- 
ting a shot. The day was warm, there was hardly a 
breath of air stirring, and the live decoys which we had 
set out sat as motionless as statues. I was about to sug- 
gest that we might as well take up the decoys and go 
back to camp, as it was 4 o'clock and there seemed to 
be little prospect of an evening flight, when one of our 
hens broke the stillness with a most violent quacking, 
which was immediately followed by a veritable babel on 
the part of her companions. Charles started up out of 



96 WLLDFOWLING TALES 

his nap at this unwonted racket and grabbed a paddle 
in place of bis gun. I looked up and saw a flock of 
perhaps a dozen mallards with wings set, and green 
heads twisted to one side, directly overhead. They 
sailed straight ahead and then made a wide swing 
around back of us. By the time they passed over us the 
second time we had got set and when their third circle 
brought them in front of us we were ready for them. 
Waiting until they dropped their red legs and seemed 
suspended, motionless, a few feet over the decoys, we 
let loose and after the smoke cleared away saw four 
greenheads and a hen on the water in front of us. We 
pushed the boat out to pick them up, thereby losing a 
fine chance at another flock, which was headed straight 
for us. We hurried back into the blind and in the next 
half-hour added a half-dozen more birds to our bag. 
The sun was now getting low and as we w^ere in a region 
where it was not easy to find the way after dark we de- 
cided to pick up the decoys and leave while it was yet 
light. As we were entering the "cut-off" which leads 
from the overflowed timber into the river, Charley called 
to me, at the same time pointing in the direction from 
which we had just come. No less than ,a dozen flocks 
of mallards, hovering just over the tree-tops, and mill- 
ing around in every direction, appeared against the red 
sky in the west. We pushed the boat into the roots of 
a fallen tree and watched the spectacle in silent wonder. 
Soon other flocks appeared, coming from every direc- 
tion, but all converging to the same spot, the pond where 



QUEST OF THE MALLABD 97 

we had made our blind. We pushed away from the dead 
tree and made our way to the river. Never having dis- 
covered a gold mine I am not familiar with the sensa- 
tions which attend such an experience; but if I ever do 
I expect to undergo something of the same thrill which 
I felt at seeing those mallards swarming over Bivins' 
pond — a thrill which was heightened by a realization of 
the possibilities which the next morning might contain. 
Just as we entered the river we heard a creaking of oars 
in the cut-off behmd us and a moment later were dis- 
mayed to see the hazy outlines of a boat emerge from 
the shadows of the timber. Evidently we had not been 
the sole spectators of the scene. 

Plan For Next Day. 

We resolved to say nothing about what we had seen at 
the camp, and when we took our seats at the supper table 
submitted to the usual bantering about coming m empty- 
handed. Of course, we took pains that nobody should 
know that we had brought in a good bag. We realized, 
however, that we had not been the only witnesses of the 
swarm of mallards that had descended on Bivins' pond, 
and as such news travels fast among the g-uides, whose 
livelihood depends on their success in getting the birds, 
we felt reasonably sure that there would be stiff compe- 
tition for the blind next morning. These suspicions were 
confirmed later in the evening when the hunters gathered 
about the big fireplace for the evening smoke. Every 
few moments a guide would enter the cabin, call aside the 



98 WILDFOWLING TALES 

hunter he was ** pushing," and there would follow a whis- 
pered conference, after which the hunter made a brave, 
but not altogether convincing effort, at appearing uncon- 
cerned. Someone suggested that it was about time to 
start the reg-ular evening card game, but strangely 
enough, every man in the place seemed to have lost in- 
terest in cards. One after another offered excuses about 
needing a good night's rest until finally Charley and I 
were left in sole possession of the cabin. ''Well, Old 
Top," said I, ''what time do you think we will have to 
start in the morning to get that blind?" Charley looked 
at his watch, "To be safe," he answered, "I think we 
had better start now." We decided, however, that we 
could safely steal a few hour's sleep, and after getting 
ammunition, etc., arranged so that there would be no de- 
lay in getting away, we set the alarm for three o'clock 
and tumbled in. After what seemed like a ten-minute 
nap the alarm startled us out of a sound sleep, and I 
grabbed the clock and muffled it in a pillow lest someone 
else in the camp be awakened. Hastily dressing, we 
swallowed a cup of coffee from our thermos bottle and 
ten minutes later had reached the boat landing. In an- 
other ten minutes we had transferred a dozen live decoys 
from their pen to our boat and were ready to start. Nor 
were we any too early. Sounds of activity came from' 
the different cottages and before we had proceeded a half- 
mile up the river the glow of flash-lights appeared among 
the duck pens along the shore. 



QUEST OF THE MALLARD 99 

We Beat Them To It. 

Our destination was perhaps three miles up the river 
from the camp and we knew that we had no time to lose, 
so we bent to our work with every ounce of energy. Ar- 
riving within perhaps a quarter of a mile of the mouth 
of the channel leading from the river into the overflowed 
timber the '' put-put" of a motor boat came to our ears. 
Now the struggle was on in earnest. No pair of Klondike 
prospectors ever raced harder to their goal than we to 
the coveted blind ; we rowed as if our very lives depended 
on the outcome. Five minutes later we arrived, panting 
and breathless, at the "cut-off," and taking the oars from 
their sockets, started to push our way among the fallen 
logs which here and there obstructed our passage. For- 
tunately we knew the ground almost as well as the na- 
tives, and although progress was slow in the darkness, 
we made fairly good headway with the aid of our flash- 
light. Ten minutes of frantic effort brought us to our 
destination, and w^e had scarcely pushed our boat into the 
blind when another boat arrived — just too late. 

A Grand Day's Sport. 

As we reached the pond the ducks arose in thousands, 
with a roar like the sound of a waterfall. We set out our 
blocks and live birds and settled down for the long wait 
until sunrise. The monotony of this was broken every 
few minutes by the arrival of a boat, whose occupants 
returned our "Good morning" with grunts of disappoint- 



lOO WILDFOWLING TiVLES 

ment at finding the blind occupied. Presently a few 
streaks of light appeared, and before it was possible to 
distinguish objects clearly we could hear the swish of 
wings overhead, accompanied by the familiar squawking 
of the hen mallards. As the sun's red rim appeared on 
the horizon there came the "boom-boom" of a gnin far up 
the river, and this was the signal for us to start. For the 
next half-hour we enjoyed all the thrills a duck hunter 
could hope to realize. From every direction the birds 
came, singly, in pairs, and in flocks, as if Bivins' pond 
were the meeting place of all the mallards in the country. 
There was something there that they wanted, and we soon 
learned that we need not observe the ordinary rules of 
caution in the matter of keeping concealed. As we picked 
up the birds we did not take the trouble of pushing the 
boat back into the blind but merely kept alongside of it. 
After an hour's shooting we picked out the greenheads 
only, and by ten o 'clock had our limit of thirty fine birds. 
That night the sound of guns could be heard until long 
after dark, and by the next da}^ Bivins' pond had been 
thoroughly "burned out." But we had had our day of 
glorious sport and we took back to Chicago not only a 
fine bag, but a memory of an achievement which is every 
duck hunter's goal — limit shooting of mallards. 



SHOOTING SNOW GEESE IN NEBRASKA 



PAUL E. PAGE 



YOU old timers, what would you give to be back on 
the old fly-way with the muzzle-loader, the black 
powder, a pocket full of last year's wasp nest for 
wadding, the flight from the north, the G. D. caps and 
youth ? 

Those G. D. caps, I have not thought of them in years, 
and what a flood of memories they unleash. I never did 
know what the G. D. stood for, but I do remember what 
I called them at the peril of my salvation. 

Those crimson sunset streaks with the never-ending 
strings of pilgrims from the north are gone, and so is 
youth, but there is a glimmer of hope for the ducks. 

I was in Alberta last October (1920) and I again stood 
on the fly-way and saw the red of the western sky made 
dim by the shadowy forms of untold thousands of mal- 
lards. I could have shot as we did in the old days, until 
my gun was so hot I had to put it in water. 

No spring shooting tells the tale. 

In 1880-81 there was a heavy fall of snow throughout 
the western states extending to the Rocky Mountains. 
This snow came in October and lasted until spring. About 
six feet fell in Nebraska and buried the com fields so that 
there was no husking until spring. 

lOI 



102 WELDFOWLING TALES 

Goose Shooting in the Old Days. 

It was a mild winter and the Missouri River kept open 
and this with the corn kept the geese on the sand bars all 
winter. They were there in the spring in untold millions. 
I was there also. Six dollars per dozen was the lure that 
attracted me. 

I meant to shoot geese in Nebraska that spring and 
was properly equipped. I used a Diamond Daly ten-bore. 
I still have the old gun. It weighs twelve pounds when 
loaded with a couple of goose shells. My load was eight 
drams of Du Font's F. G. black powder and one ounce of 
No. 1 shot, and believe me, whenever a he-goose flew into 
that load of shot there was no question but what there 
was a she-goose widow looking for a new husband. 

I had great trouble in getting the 3-inch shells to hold 
this load, and there was no such thing as throwing away 
an empty shell. They were all reloaded again and again, 
and I even starched the ends so that I could crimp them. 

Used Team to Bring in Geese. 

I put up at a farmer's and had the use of a saddle horse 
and a team to bring in my geese and take them to the ex- 
press office. I started out each day by taking my saddle 
horse to some high point where I could get a view of the 
surrounding prairie and then watched the horizon to- 
wards the river. At about 10 o'clock, when the sun had 
warmed things up a little, the first flocks of white or snow 
geese would leave the river bars and start for the corn 



SHOOTING SNOW GEESE IN NEBRASKA I0'3 

fields. My object was to locate the line of flight of these 
flocks and after I had watched a dozen or more flocks go 
over or near a certain point, I rode to that point. 

As a rule there was cover enough in the prairie grass 
to make a blind, and when there was not I used three 
stakes with chicken wire through which I wove grass. 
For an hour or so there would be a continuous flight, one 
flock following another and crossing at about the same 
place. A few birds set up as decoys helped swing in the 
flocks that got out of line. 

Took Birdseye View. 

As soon as the morning flight was over I rode back to 
the house, got a bite to eat, a new supply of shells, showed 
the driver of the team where my geese were and then 
rode to the top of some hill where I could get a birdseye 
view of a number of small sloughs with clear water in 
the center. My object was to locate a lake of this kind 
on which there was a flock of white geese that had fed 
earl}^ and had come in for their noon snooze. I must 
have the white geese, as the brant, Canada or Hutchin's 
geese would not stand for the game I intended to play. 
When I had located the lake, with not too large a flock 
on it (but drove out any geese that might be on lakes 
that I passed on the way), I would find cover in the high 
grass at least three hundred yards from the lake and at 
a point where I was in direct line with the wind blowing 
from the center of the lake. 

After being sure I had a good hiding place I would 



I04 WILDFOWLING TALES 

shoot the gun and then duck for the cover. The geese 
would get up and sometimes leave, but as a rule would 
again settle on the lake after flying around and taking a 
look-see. If they left I would look up another lake and 
try it again. If they settled back on the water I would 
get up a little closer and shoot again, and in the course 
of time, if the scheme worked right, I could shoot within 
one hundred yards of the flock and they would not fly. 
When I got things fixed in this manner I was in for a 
big shoot. Every flock that had fed and was looking for 
water would be sure to see these white geese and come 
into the lake and would circle to come in against the 
wdnd and would come within range of my blind. 

Got Eighty in Afternoon. 

It was not an uncommon thing to get fifty or sixty birds 
in a day's shoot. My big day was eighty in one after- 
noon, mostl}^ white geese, wavies I believe they are now 
called. 

There were a great many of the big Canada honkers, 
laughing geese, snow geese, and the small white geese or 
brant, but very few Hutchin's geese. They were tame, 
and one could get shots from horseback anywhere on the 
open prairie. 

I shot eight honkers one morning within 300 yards of 
the house from an old buffalo wallow, and while I was 
never a Sandow or anything like one, I have handled a 
60-pomid pack over rough ground, and it took me two 
trips to get these geese to the house. Of course, eight 



SHOOTING SNOW GEESE IN NEBRASKA IO5 

geese make an awkward load to pack, but if I had bundled 
them in a pack strap, I could not have handled them. I 
am sure that they weighed close to 100 pounds. 

I have found that all geese are thin and light of weight 
when they come from the north. They are in their prime 
in the spring when they stop in their northern flight in 
a section where they can get to overflowed corn fields by 
short flights from some undisturbed river sand bar. They 
fatten in the fall when they stop long enough on the 
prairie to feed on the grain fields, but like the prairie 
canvasback they are at their best when corn fed in the 
spring. 

As to Weight of Geese. 

The Hutchin's goose is identical with the Canada, but 
much smaller, with an average weight of around 5^ 
pounds. I never weighed but one goose. One spring, 
while living in South Dakota, a pair of honkers came on 
my place and hung around a month or more feeding on 
the overflowed corn fields and roosting in an open spot in 
a grass lake. I tried time and again to get them, but they 
were onto my game from the start. I believe the old 
gander knew my every move and even the size of the shot 
I was shooting. I wanted this pair for the reason that 
the gander Avas out of proportion in size to the goose, I 
stalked them one day, when the wind was blowing a gale, 
by means of a saddle horse, and got the pair. The goose 
was hog fat and weighed 12 pounds. The gander was a 
third larger and weighed 11 pounds. There was not an 



I06 WILDFOWLING TALES 

ounce of fat on him, in fact he was in such condition that 
he was not fit for the table. 'There were no marks of old 
wounds on him and I concluded he had about lived out 
the 100 years allotted to him and was on the road to goose 
heaven. This chap had frame enough to have carried 
5 or 6 pounds more of meat and fat and had he been in 
the same condition as his mate would have weighed 16 
or 17 pounds. He was the largest goose, in the air or 
sitting on the water, I have ever seen. 

I would put the weight of the Hutchin's goose at a 
minimum of 3 pounds and a maximum of 6 pounds when 
they reach the prairie feeding grounds direct from the 
north. Six weeks later I would place their weight at a 
minimum of 4 pounds and a maximum of 8 pounds. The 
Canada goose under like conditions I would place at 8 to 

10 pounds and 10 to 14 pounds. Where the Canada goose 
reached the overflowed corn fields in the spring and fed 
for a month with a short flight from water and sand and 
was not hunted much, I would place its weight at from 

11 to 15 pounds with now and then an old gander that 
would scale up to 16 pounds. I shot a number of Canada 
geese in Alberta last October (1920), and while they were 
large and full grown birds they were direct from the 
north and were very thin and light. While I did not 
weigh any of them I am quite sure that I did not have a 
bird that would weigh over Ti/o or 8 pounds. I believe 
that shooters who claim the low weights for the Can- 
ada honker shoot their birds under the same conditions 
and those who claim the heavy birds shoot theirs under 



SHOOTING SNOW GEESE IN NEBKASKA IO7 

like conditions. What I mean, is that the light-weight 
geese were feeding under like conditions regardless of 
what part of the country they were shot in and were 
probably feeding on wheat or grass and such roots and 
seeds they could get in the marshes. The heavy geese 
were shot where they were feeding on corn. 

Remarks Apply to Western Territory Only. 

My remarks apply to the goose country tributary to 
the Missouri, Platte, Snake and Columbia rivers and not 
to the coast districts. I have never shot on the Atlantic 
coast and know nothing about the conditions there. I 
have shot considerable on Puget Sound but the only bird 
that looks like a goose that I have shot on that body of 
water is the black sea brant. He is a little sport, but 
boy ! oh, boy ! he does spread himself in a baking pan. 

It may be that geese are getting lighter. I am unable 
to say as I have not shot in the Missouri goose countr^^ in 
25 years. But this I do know. If there are no geese 
killed on the Platte or Missouri river com fields that 
weigh from 10 to 15 pounds, geese are getting lighter. 

Remember, I am writing of a time when the geese were 
not chased from field to field with an automobile and kept 
on the move by m.eans of every killing device known to 
man. 

A goose is like a hog. Give him a fresh water sand bar, 
plenty of soaked com and a quiet landscape, and he will 
get hog fat. On the other hand, chase him around and he 
develops into the same kind of a bird as the razor-back 
hog of Florida. 



DUCK SHOOTING IN ONTARIO 



FOREST H. CONOVER 



LOOKING back thirty-five years may seem a long 
time hence — even then my prediction forecasting 
the future was a serious one for the retaining of 
the migratory game birds. 

Sport with the gnn, from the age of fourteen, easily 
lured me into the realms of that fascinating recreation, 
and within its haven I have taken abode as the pinnacle 
of all outdoor sport in the art of the gun, for with it this 
kingly avenue offers to you a variety of conditions in 
shooting that no other line maintains. As well being a 
good shot the sportsman who entertains the desire as 
a masterly knight of the gun in "Duck Shooting" will 
have taken his degrees as well in the temperament of his 
duck boat, that more or less marks his destiny to a suc- 
cessful issue. 

Resume of the Past. 

The establishment of all the essentials in the art with- 
out doubt would have a timely ending without the fullness 
of the resources creative of the sport. Year after year 
has revealed a perpetual dwindling of all species of water- 
fowl more or less, not from natural causes, but from non- 
observance of the law in conservation and the curse in 

1 08 



DUCK SHOOTING IN ONTAMO IO9 

cuddling agencies that beset the spare and limited flocks 
of the remaining waterfowl from the frigid north to the 
coast lines of the south, nothing more or less evident than 
unrestricted opportunities being responsible for the loss 
of our ducks. 

The automobile, the broad scope of modern sporting 
arms, the disturbance of natural environments, including 
the deceptive battery and deadly contents, supported by 
aids of long open seasons and unlimited game bags, has 
changed the scene so appalling to the ethics of sports- 
manship ; and now we should take our hats off to the au- 
thors of the Federal Migratory Bird Law betw^een Great 
Britain and the United State.s. 

The past can but remain as a gruesome memory, and 
within lurks a conscience of condemnation and perchance 
the ghost of solace smiling at the ethics of by-gone days 
in the mists of black powder and spring shooting. Those 
without transgression may cast the first stone. 

Shooting in the Eighties. 

Back in the eighties I have the memories of the past, 
and may here relate one of the eventful exploits at one 
of the ducking grounds in Kent County, Ontario, kno"\\ni 
as the ''Erie Eau," adjacent to the waters of Lake Erie. 
The extent of this area is nine miles in length by two and 
one-half miles wide, with deep fringing of bays and chan- 
nels thickly studded with wild rice, and the deeper w^aters 
afford abundance of wild celery, appeasing the appetites 
of the canvasback and redhead. 



no WILDFOWLING TALES 

Our party of four had been in camp here for three days, 
and although moderate weather had marked no unusual 
bags, there was evidence sufficient to suspect the coming 
of a wind storm that would be in order for October. My 
slumbers had been broken at intervals throughout the 
night listening to the terrific gusts of wind that threat- 
ened the safety of the tents, although in the midst of 
jeopardy I saw the tall reeds careening partially pros- 
trate in the toils of the maddening wind currents, tearing- 
great ragged holes in the dark canopy above, and cat- 
pawing the placid waters of the ponds. 

My trained pointer dog, Budd, yawned and figited, cast 
warning glances toward me as a premonition of the storm. 
All night the storm raged, and the gnawing of the guy 
lines as they tugged at the stakes cutting the wind 's force 
gave doleful screeching sounds. 

The Morning Start. 

At five o'clock the camp was astir, and easing off the 
lacing of the tent opening I peered out. The wind had 
somewhat abated, and after the morning repast I was in- 
side my hunting clothes, and with a good supply of 
shells, gTin and dog, stepped into my hunting boat. The 
wind tore at me like a wild beast as I fought to keep bal- 
ance in the boat as she payed away before the gale. I 
maintained the long push paddle that kept the little grass 
witch-head on to its destination. 

Over yonder beyond the reed lines are two or three 
ponds that in my early morning's reckoning would likely 



DUCK SHOOTING IN ONTABIO III 

afford good opportunities for shooting. The gloom of 
the night was slowly waning into and with it the dark 
leaden strings of misty clouds racing to the leeward gave 
way for the first rays of the morning light. 

Shoving the boat with a strong drive into the reeds and 
grass I scrambled out, lining a trail for one of the ponds. 
Budd close at heel, worming his form through the seeth- 
ing growth, was alert, for his education in early days of 
puppyhood had not been neglected. He knew from A to 
Z the ropes that pull off the stunts giving fame to dogs 
worthy as retrievers, the glory they merit. 

The morning's grey dawn still flung its shadows along 
the borders of the sloughs. The rasping, rustling reeds 
were tuned to the pitch of the gale's din. Downy bunches 
of fleeting cat tail, ducking and darting, were at the mercy 
of the wind. I had just finished tucking in my cap lacing, 
and picking up the gun was confronted with a zig zagging 
mallard, beating up wind on the lee of the pond. Letting 
him pass to the windward, he fell to the crack of the gun 
within fifteen yards. 

Myriads of Ducks. 

In nearly every direction were ducks ; some ascending, 
others descending, side drifting and tilting, laboring to 
gain some abode of shelter. A half dozen blacks now 
pitched before me, and doubling up the leader, two more 
fell on a cross flight with the second barrel. Bungling 
a chance on a pair of gadwalls, I scored only with the 
second shot. Returning to the boat with my ducks, I 



112 



WILDFOWLING TALES 



found I had eleven, and after replenishing the shells 
crossed over to another location that gave ample shooting. 
Here I remained for some time, meeting with good suc- 
cess, and after toting my birds over a third trip, I found 
I had thirty-one, principally mallards. 

I reached the camp at 2 p. m., after a laborious struggle 
against the gale, and found the rest of my companions 
in advance of me reporting equally good success relative 
to the day's events, which brought to a close a most en- 
joyable and successful hunting trip. 

Those were days when ducks flew and migrated in 
flocks of hundreds and restrictive regulations among the 
unwritten laws. 




TIMBER SHOOTING ON THE ILLINOIS RIVER 



WILLIAM C. HAZELTON 



DO NOT a few old battered decoys conduce to 
reminiscence? Could they speak, what tales they 
could tell of many glories of bygone days ! I can 
well remember the first decoys I ever saw. They had 
been abandoned, being frozen in at a rush-bordered 
pond, by hunters not from our country. Who they had 
belonged to we could only surmise. Shades of Elliston, 
supreme decoy-builder, they had been made by a master 
hand! They were wonderfully lifelike. 

Many autumns now have vanished since I first shot 
mallards in the timber on the Illinois river. On the part 
of the river on which I then lived, timber shooting was 
had in the spring only, rarely in the fall. Further down 
the river, at Senachwine and other points, one could 
shoot for weeks at a time in the timber, especially in the 
spring. I have shot so close to the old towii of Hennepin 
I could plainly hear the cries of the school children play- 
ing during recess. 

Timber shooting is one of the best of sports. The 
Illinois River and Reelfoot Lake are two of the most 
noted localities on the continent for this form of sport. 
There you see that royal bird, the mallard, at his best. 
All the shoal-water ducks frequent the timber to some 

113 



114 WILDFOWLING TALES 

extent, but the mallard is most numerous. The mallard 
is never an open-water bird from choice. They love the 
overflowed timber. Failing that, their next choice is 
little rush-surrounded ponds. In the timber they find 
both food and shelter. They prefer to roost there^ too. 
If you rout them out from a spot in the timber they 
like, instead of settling in some other place for the day, 
they will come back shortly, singly, and in small flocks, 
especially should the weather be blustering and chilly. 
Here they feed on smartweed, nut grass and other 
aquatic plants and vegetable matter. Practically all the 
timber that is standing in the fall at a normal stage of 
water are dead trees and sometimes there is considerable 
buck-brash. Dead trees will stand upright in the water 
for years before succumbing. 

The deep water and diving birds, such as redheads, 
canvasbacks, bluebills, etc., do not frequent the timber. 
In the routine of duck migration which occurs during the 
open season three characteristics are obvious: Rest 
and retirement on large areas of water; the midday 
revel and preening of feathers ; the afternoon or evening 
flight to the feeding grounds. 

Calling Very Effective in the Timber. 

Nowhere will ducks respond to a call more readily 
than in the timber. This is largely because, not seeing 
any large areas of open water, they are prone to be 
guided by the call of their kind, a fact of which the 
hunter takes full advantage. 



TIMBER SHOOTING ON THE ILLINOIS RIVER 1 1 5 

Last November I enjoyed several days' shooting in 
the timber on the Illinois, and will endeavor to describe 
one day's sport. I hasten to add that each day's ex- 
perience was different, which explains the fascination of 
the alluring sport of wildfowling. 

After watching the flight for a time, I had picked out 
a spot in the edge of the timber near an open pond that 
the mallards seemed to favor. The height of the timber 
was from twenty to forty feet. Although I had decoys 
with me, I would try and get some shots without their 
use. At first I tried a few shots sitting in my boat. 

My first two shots were at a small flock of five mal- 
lards, killing one with each barrel. An old drake passed, 
his head moving from side to side, looking for his 
kind, or for possible danger. I let him pass, not firing. 
Now a flock of gray ducks (gadwalls) headed directly 
for me. I fired two shots when they were nearly over 
head, but only scored one hit. Fortunately, none of 
the birds down were winged, but all were dead, so I 
let them lie where they had fallen. After studying the 
gray duck considerable I have discovered while not ex- 
cessively w^ary on the water, when the wing they are 
very cautious and are as quick to note a suspicious ob- 
ject as the mallard. Ofttimes I could see the white 
spots on their wings as they volplaned at a distance. 
The gray duck is a fine sporting bird, and also excellent 
eating. 



Il6 WILDFOWLING TALES 

Drops a Pair of Hens. 

Now a pair of ducks headed my way and were un- 
suspicious of danger. When nearly overhead I fired 
and one started to fall. Quickly I got in the second 
barrel and was surprised to get my second bird also. 
When I pushed out to gather them I was astonished to 
find two hen birds, one a mallard and the other a pintail, 
A splended pair of birds, too, fat and hea\^\ Were they 
widows, divorcees, or a couple of vamps? One is con- 
fronted with such a legion of surprises in duck shooting, 
what will happen next cannot be surmized. 

As I did not wish to build a blind and some of the 
ducks would see my boat, I decided to leave it further 
back in the woods and wade out and sit on an old 
log which had part of a tree trunk overhanging. This 
was blind enough and a firm seat. Birds coming toward 
me against the wind would pass me before they would 
see the boat. Get the idea? 

I had just got settled when a duck came right over 
me not over 30 yards high. I gave her a shot and as she 
fell I saw that it was a black duck or black mallard, as 
they are called on the river. I noted the glossy feathers 
and the darker speculums. The black duck is not a 
freak of nature like the albino, but is a separate and 
distinct species. Being in lesser numbers in the west, 
they often travel with mallards. They are to the east 
what the mallard is to the west. 



TIMBEK SHOOTING ON THE HiLINOIS RIVER 11/ 

Now the thin ice wliich had formed over night had 
melted from the sun's rays and ducks were returning 
with the utmost confidence, seeming to say, "We know 
this place. It is safe here." But two streams of fire 
poured from a figure seated on a log and they whirled 
away on the wind to seek a safe refuge. 

Longneck pintails drifted overhead. Little flocks of 
greenwing teal scurried among the trees. Baldpates flit- 
ted into a large open pond just beyond, giving their 
musical whistling call. Occasionally I could pick out 
a black duck among the mallards. 

A Prelude to Winter. 

There was a little touch of winter now, with feathery 
snowflakes drifting down, and a stiff northwest wind. 
High up four large flocks of bluebills passed over, head- 
ing down the valley. They were plainly travelers from 
the north. Who can imagine the wanderings or travels 
of a flock of ducks in a day when on migration? Four 
years ago in southwestern Iowa I saw a flight of tens 
of thousands of noble mallards down the valley of the 
Missouri river. It lasted during three days of bitter 
cold weather. They would not face the cutting north- 
west wind. They were bound for the south and Imew 
where they were going. What I marveled at was that 
every flock knew its course as though following a com- 
pass. In the old days I have seen wild pigeons following 
the same course, although each flock was out of sight 



Il8 WILDFOWLING TALES 

of the preceding one. Jack Miner is the man who has 
taught us much about the migration of waterfowl. "As 
the crow flies"' is a tradition, but as the duck flies is a 
revelation in directness. Their migrations are a mystery 
and a marvel. One reasons that the older birds direct 
the flight. As early as March last season large numbers 
of flocks of ducks and geese were in Canada while it 
was yet cold in this latitude. The urge to migrate comes 
to them early. 

Sometimes one learns much by watching waterfowl 
unobserved at rest and play. It was pleasant to sit there 
and watch the journeying waterfowl as well as those 
nearer at hand. A flock of Canada geese honked do^^^l 
the valley with their far-carrying cries. Numberless 
bands of cormorants, erroneously called loons on the 
river, filed by. Their formation in flight often resembles 
that of geese. The resemblance ends there. Someone 
has humorously dubbed them "nigger geese." The true 
loon is the great northern diver. 

Wariness of the Goldeneye. 

Now I heard a flock of goldeneyes coming down the 
valley. Nothing stirs me more than the noise of an ap- 
proaching flock of these waiy birds. The first distant 
thrilling whir as the sound reaches your ears, the louder 
nearer whistling as they pass and the final distant and 
gradual dying away of the musical sound of their wings. 
Many lonely far northern marshes and lakes had they 



TIMBEE SHOOTING ON THE ILLINOIS KIVER II 9 

visited. Peace River, the Athabasca, and doubtless their 
keen yellow eyes had swept the borders of the Arctic 
seas. One of the keenest-sighted and alert of all water- 
fowl, as I discovered while studying them on the lower 
Kankakee River when a boy. I have known them to 
remain there all Winter in water so swift it would not 
freeze. You need to be well concealed to decoy them. 
But I must have a few more ducks and went into action 
again. After a few hours, following a succession of 
hits and misses, I had the legal limit, mallards and gray 
ducks only. It was now about 2 o'clock and I called it 
a day. 

The Return. 

Rounding a bend in the river on my way back to camp 
and hugging the shore where the fringe of ancient oak 
trees broke the force of the wind somewhat, the reports 
of far-away shots came to my ears, and I realized to the 
utmost the glory of a life among the water-fowl. 

Where can it be enjoyed more than upon the glorious 
old Illinois River? 



I20 WILDFOWLING TALES 



RECREATION AND OUR BROTHERHOOD 



WILLIAM C. HAZELTON 



RECREATION days are among the happiest of our 
lives and none are more truly enjoyable than those 
devoted to the noble sport of wildfowling. 

In addition to our indi\ddual delight in this finest of 
pastimes, there is afforded us an opportunity to make 
new and wider acquaintances among brother knights of 
the gun and induce friendships of the most pleasurable 
kind. 

Truly are we benefitted by associating with so many of 
the rare spirits comprising the vast numbers throughout 
the land who are devotees of this fascinating sport. 

So when that vague yearning steals over the sports- 
man once more for his annual hunt, anticipation is height- 
ened by the knowledge that he will meet many of those 
kindred brother sportsmen and lovers of nature, the 
members of the United Order of Duck Hunters of 
America. I greet you, brother ! 



003 422199 6 



